Tube amps and a Stradivarius

I've always heard (and believed) that tubes sound as good as they do for 2 primary reasons:

1 - They better convey the particular harmonic structure of notes from different instruments (accuracy of tone & timbre)

2 - And very often, they overload more gracefully/less abruptly than SS devices, and the distortion byproducts sound more benign (the distortion representing more even-order harmonics and fewer odd-order ones).

But that doesn't really explain the 3D effect one often gets from tubes, where each musical note sounds more tangible, real, occupying real space in a real place. For me, that is the greatest asset of tube audio: how musically realistic the sound is.

@desktopguy Records sound better than CDs everyone knows which format is more accurate. Tubes sound better than ss everyone knows which system is more accurate. I like tubes better also. It just shows that accuracy is not more musical in this state of our technology. No one mixes up a real piano with a recording of a piano in real life, I have a beautiful Steinway B grand its a Spiro /r that plays by way of a digital engine that has 1000 levels or resolution, it plays exactly the way the original player plays it and it doesn't sound like a recording. We have a long way to go to get real accuracy.

That would be a fantastic theory, except that tubes are just as popular with headphone aficionados as with traditional 2ch audiophiles. I definitely agree tubes are doing “something” to the sound (and I like it), but microphony is probably not its primary mechanism for this. And SS isn’t the ideal wire with gain either. 

@mulveling Headphones, yep your right. I have a set of Focal Stellia and a Naim amp that is ok but isn't as good as it is expensive I want to change to a tube amp also. Bigger amps even ss amps vibrate naturally, could it be that the natural field of the amp creates creates microphony in tube amps also? 

@donavabdear

You’re right, self noise cannot be completely ignored. Some even advocate high-end isolation stands like HRS or Critical Mass for headphone amps. However, in my experience while isolation has made a big difference for my turntable & speaker setup, it’s not so much for my headphone setup. I have a very high end T2 electrostatic amplifier (massive tubes & SS hybrid, quad of EL34 and quad of 6922 plus a ton of OOP high voltage silicon), and quite honestly hear no meaningful difference between it on or off a Critical Mass Black Platinum shelf.

Maybe of impact in some cases - but for most cases, the self-noise energy will be a few orders of magnitude below the energy received from some big nearby speakers. But then, who knows - maybe it’s a bigger deal than I’m giving credit to. CMS would probably say I really need their new CenterStage feet (in addition to the shelf) to help defeat self-noise. But feet that purportedly required hundreds of hours burn in (sounding BAD for a lot of the lead-up to that) are just a no-go for me.

I borrowed a Stellia and liked some aspects of its sound, but it’s a bit too bright for me with SS amps. I liked the Utopia better - that headphone also sounded quite good right out of a Naim integrated amp.