Hybrid vs. Straight Tubes

I think you should buy as much power as you need (which may be less than you think). Which is dependent on speaker, room, and loudness requirements. In almost every case I have experienced, lower powered amplification sounds better to me, IF, it is enough power to reach the volume level and dynamic you are looking for. I find you need a lot less power with tubes, because they simply sound much better at handling peak power demands without distortion. At the stereophile show a few years back, there was a side by side comparison between a 30 watt tube amp and a 200 watt SS amp - guess which sounded louder without distortion.

my favorite tube integrated amp is an original jadis orchestra. i believe the first version was 60 watts.

listen to this product and decide for yourself if it has the qualities of tube amplification which satisfy your taste.

In regards to this issue of power.

Today I audtioned a really nice Leben CS600 amp (32 watts). Unfortunatlely price wise it is more than I can afford right now. The dealer had as an alternative CS200 with only 10 watts of power. He claimed that it should suffice for my RS6s...

I don't get it! I used to think that wattage was directly related to volume. I know now that this isn't the case, but what does wattage provide (this seem like a very obvious questions)? How can I know that a given amp will be suitable for speakers?

Wattage still does relate to loudness, but you also get the same loudness with less power if you have more efficient speakers. The other issues is how an amp handles clipping (tubes do it well, SS not so good), and short dynamic output for handling transients - and you can't really tell that from wattage. Some 50 watt amps have tremendous dynamic power that is only needed for very short periods of time and can sound every bit as "loud" and a 200 watt amp that doesn't handle transient power delivery quite as well. I can tell you a Pass XA30.5 sounds like a lot more power than many other "30 watt" amps.