Dear Halcro: IMHO I think that depends on which kind of colorations you want to have ( and distortions too. ) along your music sound home system reproduction priorities.
+++++ " purist 'valve' pluses such as....transparency, harmonic richness, three dimensional realism and soundstage .... " ++++++
IMHO all those " pluses " are only colorations on the tube units that degraded the original recorded signal.
IMHO after all music has at least two characteristics: neutrality and natural accuracy.
Like you I was owner for seveal years of tube electronics till I learned.
Today the Atmasphere phonolinepreamp is perhaps the best experience I have with tubes but even this one degraded the recorded signal in higher way that a good SS design.
In a home audio system IMHO the foundation of the reproduced music reside and belongs to the bass frequency range a frequency range where no one tube unit I heard can do justice to the music or to a well designed SS unit.
I can go on with other frequency ranges as the high frequency one where even there the tube units fall short.
Do you want to talk about midrange frequency range because is worst?
If I have to decide between a stand alone phono stage and stand alone line stage IMHO and with out any single doubt I will go fro the line stage.
Tubes were not designed for phono stages, a phono stage is the IMHO the hardest challemge in audio electronics ( I mean a well designed one. ), a phono stage ask for several characteristics to fulfil any cartridge needs: very low noise, very low distortions, wide frequency response, accurate inverse RIAA eq., very high active gain, no more than 2-3 gain stages ( some one named the Asthetix where the top of the line ( all tube ) has around 6-7 stages and even that not only was colored/distorted but noisy. ), that can handle cartridge level output from at least 0.1mv, etc, etc.
All those characteristics is a challenge for a SS unit but for a tube unit is " imposible " to fulfil/match.
Now if you want to " really painted the walls of the recording space through tubes " then you can do it but that has almost no true relationship with the recorded music sound.
My priorities are almost totally different from yours: I'm always for well designed electronics that permit the original recording to be reproduced adding the less along loosing the less. All this has nothing to do on what I like or not. First target: neutral/natural accuracy ( not cold or analytical or warm or lush or just " colored ". ). I don't like " audio clown " items.
Regards and enjoy the music,
R.
