For anyone who moved from tubes to solid state — a question

imagine an easy load no bizare phase angles, gentle slope filters speaker with power factor corrected feed forward amp below 100 hz with 11 bands of analog EQ...amp matched to sub, sub matched to amp, then the high pass goes to a hybrid amp with tube front end, liquid cooling for rock solid bias ( think that thru ), bipolars in a cyclotron floating ground output and a bunch of other neat tricks of amplifier supremely matched to speaker load and sensitivity..

Vandersteen 7 speaker and Vandersteen 7 amp

you can get close for $30k with Quattro and Model 5 amp

as othersstated, but i will paraphrase, unfair advantage when you can purpose design an amplifier for the load, and in this case split the load 

I will say 20 series Ayre amps are super great SS also, very liquid, very musical, harmonically dense...

We have these two recent statements:

best of breed tube and solid state are very close now, and ever converging

And the opposite claim:

Tubes and SS are a different paradigm. They approach producing music from different perspectives. My understanding is that tubes are a more visceral experience and SS more intellectual.

Thing is both of these can be true. Depends on the amps. People can jump and complain but the thing is some tube amps measure as good as SS amps and some SS amps measure as bad as tube amps. The traditional "tube sound"  smoothness is due to the harmonics they distort. It has a pleasant sound that most people enjoy especially with analog. That digital "glare" some complain about is because we're used to hearing the distortion of vinyl and tape played through tubes and think somehow that's the way music should sound. If someone thinks digital glares or is hard edged and difficult to listen to for long have a 3 piece jazz ensemble in your living room and listen to the sax or trumpet and tell me about glare or next time you're in a concert hall listen carefully to the violins and flute/piccolo section. So to cut to the chase to me music sounds more real, instruments naturally have ringing and glare and good neutral SS reproduces it better. 
What did I give up? Distortion. 

...and then there's the paradigms of amp choice and the speakers it drives....

There's been a lot of waxing wonderous of 'this' driving 'that'...and it generally is tied to the tube v. silica...which, is really actually rather special, imo..

The SET that can make this driver sing like a lark....but driven by SS type anything will make some prefer to have cellophane crushed around their head....

The SS that makes that driver sound like the sax solo is getting etched into the backside of your skull....but it feeeelss  sooo gooood.  Swap...

...and you'd rather have a root canal anywhere but your ears.

It's real subjective....and even then, subject to your listening den/torture chamber.....

The jury's still out on hybrids as far as I can tell....

The 'Everyamp for Everyone'?  Or the 'Nothing for Nobody'? *L*

A 3 position switch: T/SS/STS ?  Any love/hate/meh relationships out there?  Curious minds are nosy...*S*

What did I give up? Distortion.

Distortion is what causes solid state amps to be bright and harsh.