Never Owned a Tube Amp and Want Advice

Most tube amps are "optimistically" rated.  That 60 watt tube amp might deliver that wattage at peak, but at 60 watts, it would be typically distorting quite a bit.  Tube amps simply do not do well in a numbers game.  

Because most tube amps are distorting quite a bit before reaching their "rated" output, a 60 watt amp should be considered more like a 30 watt amp.  But, even with your 88 db/w efficient speakers, you will mostly be operating below one watt of output anyway; only a few peaks might get close to 30 watts, and tube amps distort gracefully.

I think most people who are unfamiliar with tubes substantially overestimate how much power they will need.  Unless you have notoriously difficult to drive speakers, even modest tube amps can be made to work with your speakers.  If you have to keep the volume down a bit, that is just one of those compromises that one has to make with ANY piece of audio gear; none are perfect.

I suspect that the notion of "tube watts" being more powerful than solid state has to do with the subjective impression that good tube amps deliver--the sound is full, lively and engaging at substantially lower volume so one thinks the system is playing loud when it is not.

Everyone, I appreciate the input. Seems like I have to start listening and go from there!

I should have mentioned that you should also look at output transformerless (OTL) amps.  Atmasphere mentioned, above, the the Tylers are an easy, flat load.  That makes them a good candidate for an OTL amp.  Atmasphere, following forum rules, did not mention his own brand of OTL amps, so I will mention them as good candidates.  These amps sound very clear, immediate, lively and engaging.  For my taste, they are a touch lean (midrange on up being a bit more prominent than upper bass), but that is a matter of taste, and the good attributes of Atmasphere amps can be quite compelling.

For not crazy expensive amps, I like the Italian brand Synthesis, particularly the A40 and A100 models (the bigger chassis models of this brand are more reliable because they have less tendency to overheat).  Tonally, this brand leans toward the warmish side.  The same is true of Audio Note, another brand I like, but, most of their stuff is quite pricey.

When I think of solid state, I understand that the continuous power rating is one thing and peak power supply is another.

My question is:

Is it true with tube amps that if an amp is rated at 60 wpc that is all you are going to get or do capacitors, power transformer, etc. come into play to allow higher peak power?

Peak power is an early 1970s thing. All amplifiers today are rated at continuous power. 

Now 'peak power supply' as you put it might be a current rating that has to do with what happens when you short out the power supply, and might be stated in amps. This is really a statement of how much energy is stored in the supply (and how big the spark will be when you short it out) rather than anything to do with how much power the amp makes.

Most tube amps are "optimistically" rated. That 60 watt tube amp might deliver that wattage at peak, but at 60 watts, it would be typically distorting quite a bit. Tube amps simply do not do well in a numbers game.  

This has nothing to do with tube or solid state and has everything to do with how conservative the manufacturer is with their ratings. We rate our amplifiers for RMS power into an 8 ohm load and we rate them to not be clipping at that power level. Now there are different definitions used by several measuring organizations such as Stereophile, but clipping technically speaking is when you see the test sine wave signal getting a flattened top and bottom- as if someone 'clipped' the top and bottom of the waveform off with a pair of scissors. That is why its called 'clipping'. Any other definition is arbitrary.

  For my taste, they are a touch lean (midrange on up being a bit more prominent than upper bass), but that is a matter of taste, and the good attributes of Atmasphere amps can be quite compelling.

Being more load sensitive, this has far more to do with how the amplifier is dealing with the load rather than the actual character of the amp itself. If you have it on a proper load (and the Tyler appears to be an excellent example) its not at all lean. The bigger the OTL, the less of an issue this is, IOW smaller OTLs are more load sensitive.


Now @larryi made a  good comment about amplifier clipping- if you plan to use a solid state amp, my surmise is you'll need to have about 200 watts to do what a 50-60 watt tube amp will seem to do on this speaker, entirely because of the simple fact that tube amplifiers clip (overload) so much more gracefully than solid state. When a solid state amp breaks up, its instantly audible even if its only for a few milliseconds. But in the case of a tube amp this isn't always true. They can overload so gracefully that it may not be apparent until the amp is really heavily overloaded. IME its important that the amplifier have instantaneous overload recovery- this is very helpful in minimizing the audible artifacts when the amp is briefly overloaded. This is why tube amplifier power seems to carry more weight than solid state.

Here we go again with the statement that tube watts are greater than S.S. watts. This statement is patently false and should call into question anything this member says in the future. Also, I maintain that impedance is more important in the greater scheme of things than efficiency when considering speakers with tube amps. Higher impedance speakers allow one to consider OTL amps which are the best I have heard.