TUBE or SS?

I am with the groover, go with the ARC all the way and forget the rest. In Bill Johnson we Trust! Use a transistor go to jail. I recomend ARC amp and pre and Vandersteen or Magnagans. Use the vandersteen subwoofer and you can get away with a smaller amp. 10k will buy a hell of a system with this approach. An ARC VT50 with a Vandersteen sub is a great set up and gives you the realism of the low bass.

To many good amps and preamps in both sold state and tube. I guess the reason I love tubes, is you can change them with different brands and experiment. SS gives better bass control, unless you are looking at some very good ARC or VTL or the like, then they can give even the best SS a run. COnsider a integrated, wheter SS or tube. Krell makes a killer one, as does YBA, Classe, Linn, and other good SS people. In tubes the the VTL Avitar or even the CARY 300b SEI. But in the end, what do you like musically, some synergys are better than others, just as in speakers. A 5 watt SET may sound great, but they dont do Heavy Metal. Solid state may not give the best soul to chamber music. The arguments grow by the second. For a general system for most music, try the following ideas: Audible Illusions preamp ($2000), ARC or VTL in the $4000 range, good Monster Cables as a compromise (or Kimble, or AudioQuest), then on speakers, if classical or Jazz try some Magnapans, for Studio Jazz rock and Pop try some Klipsch ( Yes Klipsch, they rock great!). For simpler set ups try a Musical Fidelity A300 integrated at $1500, agood turntable and arm like the Rega 25, a Rega Planet cd player, and Klipsch speakers or Maggys. This will give you lotsa of fun! The best advice, just go out and audition as much as you can, with music you know and love. Let YOUR ears decide for you.

I originally auditioned a pair of Dunlavy Athenas with a ARC vt-100 tube amp. When i went back for a second listen the speakers were hooked to a Pass Labs aleph (i think it was a 2, about 60w) and something wasn't quite right. Re-attaching the dunlavys to the VT-100 brought back the openness and smoothed out the highs. There was no comparison the tubes won hands down. I ended up with VTL 185 monoblocks and a VTL 5.5 pre driving the dunlavies and couldn't be happier I added a ARC cd-2 andt HT cables to the equation, bought it all off this site and didn't exceed your budget by all that much. keep your eyes open for deals and focus on the glow

Piezo, The Pass Labs Model 2 are monobloc amplifiers, not stereo. There would have been a pair of them. They also output 100 watts per channel and sound great on my Dunlavy SC-IVs. A CJ Premier 11 though, does sound better to my ear. IMO, Dunlavy speakers sound best with tubes.