Low volume music

Owning both tubed and solid state amps, I find that the tubes do perform better at lower volume levels than does MY solid state amp. My tubes are mono BATs and my solid state is a Mark Levinson 331.5 (BATs during the colder months, ML during A/C months).

I think a good combo is tubes with high efficiency speakers supported by a sub (even a small Q series from Rel) would help deliver a little umph at the bottom.

everyone can give suggetions all day long but what is comes down to is that you go to a dealer that knows what they are doing and have been in the business a long time. find someone you fell you can trust. then listen until your ears find something they cant live without. dont buy until you found exacly what you want

With out a doubt I'd check into Quad esl's...

In my experience, the best for low volume listening are slightly-bright speakers that have very good analytical power and sensitivity. The amps don't matter as much as the speakers do so you need to tackle the speaker choice first. Triangles are a great candidate. I have never heard any speakers sound as good as they do at low volumes.

Tube amps are a good choice as well. I find that SS amps' lose bass at low volumes whereas tube amps don't. The Fletcher Muson curve will tell you that human hearing needs extra bass at low volume to get a linear response. So keep that in mind.

Arthur

As some have already pointed out. Bass is an issue. You need to use the equivalent of a "loudness" button at low levels or you will lose the bass response due to reduced hearing sensitivity.

If you refuse to have any tone controls whatsoever (often an audiophile affliction) then you need to find a speaker with warm resonant harmonic distortion in the bass. You could also look for a tube amplifier or something with high output impedance that will boost the speaker at the woofer resonance point (more bass) and increase harmonic distortion (you can create this by overdriving slightly a tube amp without sounding too loud. SS amps can't do this as they sound awful when overdriven).

Remember that sounds seem louder or better defined if they are rich in harmonics...perceptively this means that the tone or note sounds "fuller". You lose some accuracy in terms of true timbre of the instruments but you gain in having a system that you can enjoy at quite low levels without disturbing others.