Tube AMP or SS

Although I understand electronics very well, electronics and audio are not the same. While those formulas come out fine on paper, they don't sound the same.

I had a 150 watt SS amp that was barely sufficient, now I have a 70 watt tube amp that seems to put out more or equal volume for sure; this is in the same room with the same speakers. Although I can figure an electronic formula, I can not hear an electronic formula.

Darkmobius, when you say "outperforming" do you mean quality, or apparent loudness? Certainly the factors you mention have alot to do with one amp outperforming another amp qualitatively, having little to do with watts.

It's true, those curved glass bottles magnify everything, a millimeter is longer, a gram weights more, the boiling point of water is higher, and the speed of light is faster on a tube than on a transistor....(sigh).

Tubes do none of those things, but they certainly handle clipping differently,
and that is the difference that makes a difference, but I thought that was long
settled, uncontested and understood. It is not tube voodoo, they simply handle
overload differently, which allows you to play them at higher average watts
without confronting the clipping hash of SS.

By the way, Harley's article, "The Smaller Difference" in the December TAS is a
pretty interesting discussion on what could lead to the importance of listening
versus measuring, the subject versus the objective. A good read I, I think. I
think TAS is also doing a great job of examine and discussing computer based
audio - first rate stuff that is finally getting me to understand it.

Dollar for dollar one can buy more ss watts than tube watts, and in the process avoid clipping altogether. It's been pointed out numerous times in this thread alone, that different amp technologies work differently with different speaker loads, but some here keep banging the same drum, without consideration of that oft repeated fact.