solid state vs tubes

"I have auditioned and owned some and have not enjoyed the upper mid range and lower treble of [SS] amps."

I think it's very hard to get away from that once you've heard this in SS.

I was on the hunt for almost ten years trying to find a SS amp that I could live with--and hopefully afford. Long story short: my last SS amp was a Plinius, and now I own an Atma-Sphere OTL. There is always a trade-off of one inconvenience for another, and the one that you can live with is the one that remains between the speakers.

The Anthem 225 INT Amp gets you very close to that "3D imaging" of a tube amp.

I feel tubes are getting more SS, but in a good way. The days of coloured midrange and rolled off base and treble, are becoming less common, in tube amps. They still though, for me, have that magical speed, transparency, tonal richness, I find hard to find in SS.

Where are the differences? I am sure as Mapman says, one reason is the benign clipping you get with tube amps. I am sure a SS aficionada will say SS amps do'nt need to clip as they are more powerful at a given price point.

The other reason, I believe, is that tube amps tend to have fewer components in the signal pathway. I know there are exceptions, Pass Labs Aleph series for example. I think thats one reason my Aleph 3 sounded tube like.

The nearest a tube sound I reached in SS, was the Aleph 3 and the Lavardin IT. Nothing else has come close.

Good / Bad designs of both exist. It may not be easy to compare, though since speakers won't be best electrical match for both at the same time.

Best SS designs tolerate some reactive loads better than tubes.

So, if you compare 'best-to-best', you may end up with a tube amp and a certain type of speaker...maybe a single driver, while if you audition a SS amp, you'll find a better speaker.

So, If you're thinking of using a reference pair of speakers to just go thru amps until you find the 'best', forgetit.

Comparing 'best', again, it may BE impossible to tell the difference between tubes and SS in many cases and when using synergistic components. Should that be a surprise?

Key point regarding amp match to speakers by Magfan.

For example, in my case, my system and amps are geared towards optimizing performance with the OHM Walsh speakers.

I might be more receptive to tube amps if I were gunning to optimize other speakers that are more tube friendly.

Optimizing the amp to best drive the speakers is a way more important consideration than picking ss versus tube in my opinion. That and matching speakers to teh room may be the two most important things to get right when building a system in order to best assure top notch performance.

As a corollary, if tube sound is what you seek, then start with a good tube amp and then find the right speakers that can be run optimally from that.

There may be others, but Merlin is one high end speaker maker that cleverly provides optional tweaks to their speakers that enable optimal matching of tube amps as well as SS to the same speaker (their RC network tweak, which is apparently geared to provide a better impedance load for tube amps to drive in addition to other things). It would be cool if OHM did something similar, but I do not think tube amp affectionados make up a significant enough part of their customer base to bother.

In general, I believe speakers that do not have widely varying impedance curves at various frequencies should work well with either tubes or SS, but tubes may have the overall edge here still in regards to overall tonal balance in general in that I do not think most SS amps these days are voiced for this scenario in that most speakers do not fall into this category. Many modern speaker designs do not meet this criteria and many manufacturers do not provide a lot of info regarding their speakers compatibility with tubes versus SS. They just want to sell their speakers to anyone who might like them and not make things too complicated or restrictive.

Bottom line: Top notch results can be had with either technology if the amp is matched by design to optimally drive the speakers. A great amp can sound lousy running the wrong speakers and vice versa.