differences between tube and solid state designs

Audiofeil, You could be right. I gave up on SS years ago - I was running one of Threshold's SA amps and some ARC D115II's. Tonally they wre similar and fairly plesant however give the ARC a 30 minute warm up and the famous 'tube liquidity' kicked in. So much for the Threshold. I've only owned a few decent SS amps since and haven't found any reason to keep them except as a 'summer' amps when, as today, the temp is over 110 degrees! When someone can point the way for me to a SS amp that has that mid-range liquidity and high frequency air that I find in my tube amps I'll sure give them a try.

As an aside, I note that most SS adherents seem to have not been tube owners first, but that most tube owners were previously SS owners. Also, I've not noted a lot of SS advocates reporting that they were previously tube users who grew unsatisfied with the sound. Are these observations just the result of my own prejudices (I only retain what reinforces my opinion) or do they have some foundation?

Newbee, I started out as a tuber in 1965, went solid state in the 70's and 80's, and today use both. I know it's trite but there are both great and poor tube products. Same for solid state. The keys to ear pleasing sonics although simplistic, IMO are design and quality parts. I'm not an engineer by education; my thoughts are based largely on experience and a little intuition. I could be wrong.

Not to muddy the waters but the other components in the system will dictate or at least influence our choice of tubes or ss. Ask an Apogee owner to use tubes or an Avantgarde owner to use ss. They'll probably laugh in your face. Actually I owned Apogee Duettas and Ohm F years ago in a galaxy far far away. Neither of those speakers would work well then or now with tubes. Well with most tube amps anyway.

In closing I'm thankful we have so many dedicated and interested manufacturers (here and abroad) for us to have the number of choices available today. Having both topologies can only make our hobby better.

Audiofeil

I'm driving my Apogee Duetta Signatures with Rogue Audio tube monos. A good number of the newer tube designs can drive some of the Apogees and Maggies without problems (better power supply) than the older "classic" gear.

I was using a Krell Ksa-250 for a long while (I still have the Krell)...moved it to the hometheater.

Both are (were) used with a tube preamp when in use with my Duetta's. While the Rogue amps won't play at the "extream" SPL's I can get from the huge Krell...they will play "very loud"...moot point for me.

Dave

Talk about painting opinion with broad strokes of the brush. I see this all the time regarding tube amps. The critical factor with tube amps is the speaker/amp combination. If this match has not been carefully chosen then sonics will suffer considerably. For example, an SET amp and horns can sound marvelous with very small amounts of distortion(103 dB sensitive speakers require only milliwatts to produce loud music--the distortion curve is very low at this level) and a properly designed transformer(expensive) will not appreciably alter frequency response at the extremes. Tube amps require judicious choices of partnering speakers which is quite different from SS amps which are basically plug and play with just about any speakers. I started out with SS and moved on to tube amps. I did this for a good reason--not just following the herd. Tubes allow you to see into the performance and connect with the music in a way that most SS amps cannot. I'm not talking about a romantic midrange(added harmonic distortion) or a shelved down upper frequencies which may make digital sound more palatable. There is a 3D quality to tubes that SS just doesn't address in most cases. That's why I "converted" and will remain so. As to adding tubes to "sweeten" or warm up the sound I have not found this to be the case with the tube amps I prefer. I did not prefer any of the tubed DAC's I auditioned before settling on a SS CD player. My preference is for tubes to be at the amp/speaker interface where I believe tubes to be the most critical for musical realism.

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