Describe ube sound vs solid state

Tube amps at the low end of price are more emotionally engaging for opera, tears in the eye at dramatic vocal passages. Solid state requires more money to achieve tear jerker status, more likely to get a mental hand clap than tears.

Headphones actually provide the pure clear unadulterated signal including the soundstage information that is captured during the recording. Why screw with that pure signal with extraneous room reflections, standing waves, comb filter effects, echoes, etc.? That's what I'd like to know about? It sounds like you believe the soundstage is created by room anomalies.

^Human hearing can quite readably differentiate direct sound from indirect sound, especially if there is enough time between the direct sound and the reflected sound. This is how we are hardwired. For home audio with loudspeakers this can quite successfully be accomplished with proper loudspeaker and listener seating positioning. Room treatment and room correction can be most beneficial in this regard as well.
If headphone listening was so superior, why isn't the use of headphones at live performances ubiquitous? Why is it that we have no trouble having conversations in domestic rooms? If headphone listening was so much better than loudspeaker listening, why wouldn't audiophiles more often forego expensive loudspeaker based systems for the for less expense, more mobile, more convenient, less obtrusive headphone alternative?
Having music put directly into our ear canals from extreme angles is unnatural. Sure, it eliminates the influence of room sound upon the recorded soundstage, (something that can be quite beneficial to focus on specific elements of equipment and recordings) but introduces other problems that affect the gestalt of the way we naturally hear.
I fear we have already hijacked this thread enough. I will not comment on headphones vs. loudspeakers again here. Perhaps on another thread?

Ralph, can a ss amp have such low distortion as to make that comparison not tenable? I suppose a better question would be, have you ever listened to a ss amp without the typical characteristics you ascribe to them?

I have heard one solid state amp that was quite musical- it also cost $100K and made 100 watts total. It was also zero feedback. It was better than most tube amps I have heard.

But it is the exception by far. I've yet to see a solid state amp with such low distortion as to not be bright- in fact it seems that the lower distortion units are more irritating to the human ear. That this occurs is nothing new- audiophiles have been commenting on this for decades.

Norman Crowhurst wrote about this issue many years ago- back in the 1950s- we are not going over new ground here...

I am not an advocate of 'distortion of tubes' either; I prefer as little distortion as possible, but I am pragmatic in the understanding that distortion is part of the tonality of any amplifier because that is how the human ear behaves and all amplifiers have distortion.

Electroslacker,
I relate to your SS to tube transition, they just sound more natural and closer to live performers. This point was made vividly clear for me as I listen to live music in my home in my case a piano and the many live Venues I attend regularly. It just seems to be that solid-state is handicapped by its production of higher odd order distortion, it just makes instruments and human voices sound less real. There is a pervasive flatter leaner sound that just sounds incomplete to me, I know others have different experiences but these are mine. To use a food analogy, solid-state seems to present a more lite presentation where as tubes if designed properly deliver the entire sonic harmonic scope and picture in other words just more natural with the key ingredients intact. SS comes off as artificially processed by comparison. This debate will go on foreverer I recognize.