SS vs Tube: What do you hear?

Solid state preamps can sound great objectively, but tend to have a mechanical presentation, whereas the best tube pre-amps reproduce the organic quality of real instruments and voices. But I differ with many above and prefer a tube power amp over a solid state amp any day. I don't see them in the same ball-park unless you have a pig of a speaker to drive and a small budget. I have tried a large number of solid state power amps and the only sweetness they ever achieve sounds utterly artificial to my ears. Give me the real honey, not saccherine.

I matched the ARC LS10 flagship ss preamp (discontinued) with a Musi Reference RM200 (push pull) tube amp. Am very satisfied with the detailed sound but not overly luscious & expansive soundstage. amp & pre are balanced & to my ears provides a good mix between ss & tube. Also the Strightwire Crescendo interconnects & blacsilc spkr cables as well as ESP power cables made a remarkable improvement. And lastly the choice of tubes taylors the system very well-Mine being the JJKT88 since the gold lion/Genalac are just to expensive for me to justify-so far.

Depends alot on the synergy of all components. When I changed speakers to Dunlavy V's I had to get rid of the tube Amps. They just couldn't control these speakers. I like loud jazz fusion so the ss is the better mate. Both types of amps have their importance

Don't listen to the so called audio critic or any other magazines for comments in solid state being far more superior than vacuum tube equipments. The so-called audio critic is as best a low-end hi-fi magazine run by people who are more interested in making money than trying to satisfy your real audio needs or telling the truths. Low end hi-fi equipments are full of solid state products and all their advertisiers are mostly solid state equipments manufacturers. Can the audio critic bad mouthing about any solid state equipments? I don't think so. If they tell the truths about solid state, they will go under the next second!!! Clearly a confict of interest here. Poor thing!!! In hi-end hi-fi or even ultra-fi, who cares about cost!!! And for the issue of reliability, one of the tube mono-block amp. that I currently using is like 44years old and still going strong. As for myself, everythings in my system are using tubes except my Mark Levinson LNC-2 electronic x-over. A piece of advice is only read the best audio magazines that you can get. Don't touch any of those low-fi magazines since they are run by people who just don't have the experiences and qualification to publish a quality hi-end hi-fi magazine. Finally, trust your own ear and heart and you will finally find the truth.

For SS, I hear Hi-Fi. For Tube, I hear MUSIC.