What do you see as the downside of tubes?

To reply to the OP, the chief downsides of tube components are as follows:

1) you will have less time for your wife/GF/etc., leading to resentments if they are at all insecure.
2) your career will suffer as you spend way too much time listening to music instead of working.
3) your net worth will be diminished as you spend more coin on LPs and CDs, etc. than you did before emerging from the SS forest.

We put a Standby feature on our amps so that you could keep the amps warmed up 24/7 if you wanted to- and rated the amps accordingly. The nice thing about tubes is that if you want the system warmed up properly, it only takes about 3 hours, where solid state requires about a week. So IMO, why waste the energy- I don't run the amps 24/7 because I don't *have* to for best sound, though I certainly could and have done so many times in the past.

As proof of that I just came home from vacation and found that I had left my preamp on while I was gone. Sheesh- I hate wasting the power, but the preamp was none the worse for wear.

Anyway, if the tubes are in Standby (filaments but no B+), they will make very little heat (unless your amps use 6C33s). Most of the heat a tube amp makes is due to the class of operation, not the filaments. IMO if heat is what is the priority, your system is going to sound like it too. I would not call that a high end system- a high end system is all the stops out to create the realism and experience of music. To do that will make heat, tube or transistor not withstanding.

There is a common tendency to trade convenience for performance; digital vs analog and tubes vs transistors are examples of this tradeoff. If there was any way that transistors could be made to make the music that tubes can, I would not be making tube amps- but I put up with the base nature of tubes because also therein also lies the closest you are going to get to the music.

AMEN!!

"If there was any way that transistors could be made to make the music that tubes can, I would not be making tube amps"

Atmasphere, is there a scientific explanation for why this is? What is it exactly about tubes that inherently make them sound different than solid state?

Well. actually, a couple of decades ago Bob Carver demonstrated that characteristics of an audio amp can be taylored to match those of any other amp. Also, Behringer, (sorry about that Rodman99999) makes a device that can be added to a system to simulate tube sound. There is a selector switch to choose what tube type you want to match.

But if tubes turn you on, it's probably easier to just use tubes.