Tube versus SS

Mikelavigne, that is so true.  My first love was a  Phase Linear 4000, it did everything; you could alter the music so many ways, and not stop until everything sounded exactly like you wanted it to sound.

"Equalizers" were the rage back then.  I went to a high end store and non of the equipment even had tone controls; "What is this, no tone controls?".  That's when I came to the realization that what I really wanted to hear was whatever the artist presented; no more, no less.

If you prefer to "sculpture" the audio to your specifications, that's fine, that's what I used to do.

There are so many different things that sound "good'. It's not until you make the decision to want to hear only what the artist presented that you will be on the path to "Nirvana". This is a very narrow and difficult path to follow.

All amplifiers work with DC. AC is converted to DC inside all amplifiers thru transformers, rectifiers, hi freq filters and smoothing capacitors. Lower wattage power amps may also use regulators. Because of this, the quality of the mains AC has virtually NO effect on the sound (the DC) if the amplifier is properly grounded and there are no ground loops.

ALL the necessary design to make the DC as smooth as possible are ALL included in the amp itself. Noise reduction, CMMR, smoothing, ripple reduction and transient current capability are ALL included in the power supply of the amp itself.

Where you need a good quality clean AC is if you are using AC motors, like synchronous and induction.  These may be driving your turntable and their rotational stability is directly affected by the quality of the AC.  Even then, most turntables these days internally synthesize their own AC thru precision electronics if they are using an AC motor.

Therefore, power conditioners are therefore a complete waste of money for amplifiers. The only (maybe) possible use they have is for safety against over voltage spikes (lightning ?).  

The reason that most people "feel" that tubes sound "better" is most likely due to the 2nd order harmonic distortion that tubes inherently introduce. Essentially they are listening to distorted music. It is an irony that audiophiles claim they want to listen to the exact reproduction of the sound (which the SS gives you) but then again they prefer the tube sound (distorted).

For any device costing over a few thousand bucks, the sound preference is more of a personal choice rather than "quality" of the amplifier.

Cakyol, you get the prize for the most erroneous post I've read today.

How good the DC is will be determined by how bad the AC was, as well as the quality of components in the "power supply" which is where AC is turned into DC.

My two cent, to people who like transistor sound "without distortions".
Most of these people like to talk about science, measurements and distortions - having zero engineering and technical background.

Here is the great article about tubes vs transistors:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/the-cool-sound-of-tubes

1. Transistor as amplification elements has much higher level of distortions compared to triode. 
In addition to that, transistors have temperature dependence distortions that tubes don't have. This kind of distortions have inertia that make them even worse for human brain perception.

2. "Good characteristics" of transistor amplifiers achieved by using feedback everywhere, that causes to replacing of low order harmonic distortions to high order harmonic distortions. Human brain recognises of a smallest amount of high order harmonic distortions because they are unnatural.

3. The single advantage of transistor amplifiers is lack of output transformers.

4. Our brains perceive distortion in a completely different way than instruments. There is a whole science of psychoacoustics that deals with this issue.

5. High power amplifiers are useless, cause compression and distortion of speakers.
Here is an example:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/power-compression-vs-thermal-distortion-loudspeaker-alexander-wilson/
"

Taking an example of a voice coil using 10 meters of 0.2mm Copper with a typical resistance of 5.5 Ohm at 20 degrees C.

Apply power (music signal) & the voice coil jumps to 120°C and the resistance rises to approx. 7.5 Ohm….Now the resulting current flow through the voice coil drops by approx. 35% ….So does the SPL….This is a 35% distortion!

Orders of magnitude worse than the usual suspects of THD or IMD which loudspeaker manufacturers like to quote.

With passive crossovers in multi way systems thermal power compression will shift XO frequencies when the voice coil resistance changes – resulting in summation errors between the two drivers involved, depending on program and listening level.

The same holds true for notching out resonances or compensating impedance….The more complex the passive crossover the worse the TD effect becomes.

Why 120 degrees C?

This is a safe or medium range voice coil temperature, many voice coils hit double or triple this temperature on a regular basis.

The energy involved is as follows:

The weight of our VC wire is slightly below 3g if we calculate length multiplied by cross sectional area multiplied by specific mass of copper.

We require approx. 1 Watt for 1 sec for each Kelvin temperature increase (no cooling assumed here), looking at the thermal material constants for copper

To heat up this < 3g of copper wire our voice coil is made from, we only need 10 sec of 10W input to finally arrive at a 100°C increase – or – if we have fortissimo playing – a very short 1 sec of 100W input."