Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

Dave_b, I used to be pretty skeptical about power cords and such, it's also interesting that you mentioned SS being sensitive. When I bought my Yggdrasil DAC it was really bright. I initially thought that it was something downstream, an interconnect issue or something, but after spending a ton on ICs, I eventually relented and bought a hospital grade isolation transformer after a number of people suggested doing so, it fixed the problem. When I bought my tube preamp Don Sachs told me that I needed a good cable for it, but he suggested that virtually any heavy gage cable would be fine, so for tubes it's just a potential issue, and it would seem that for SS, it's not only about supplying sufficent current, but depending upon your incoming power it may well act as a filter, a filter that a tube based component apparently doesn't need. If so, that could also help explain yet another reason many prefer tubes. If they had unaddressed power issues when using SS gear, assuming for the sake of argument that tubes don't share that problem, would be one more reason that many prefer tubes.

Tube amps are pretty sensitive to power cords too...

Perhaps I stated my case inadequately.  What I was inferring was that power conditioning per se can dramatically alter the resultant sound from a SS amp/device.  Tube gear does respond to power quality as well, but does not seem to change its predominant characteristics to the same degree.  I’ve owned a lot of both types over the years.  Just my experience.

QUESTION: Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

ANSWER: We would have listened to solid state glare for a much longer period of time.

Thanks for listening,

Dsper

I thought that way as well dspr, but recent SS offerings such as my Krell Vanguard really has none of those typical artifacts.  In fact, the last tube preamp I tried from ARC injected just that sort of glare you would equate with SS.  There are obviously ways to offer musical performance in both designs, but just because something is tube based, does not require it to be musical or lacking warts.