Solid State for Rock and Tubes for Jazz, Yes or No

I love my Tubes for Metal, Classical, Space Music, vinyl, Digital, movies and TV!
I have had both Solid State and Tube, but I love the tubes over the Solid State.
I do not understand why some people think Tubes cannot have Bass, my Tube Amps, Tube D.A.C., Tube Phono stage, Tube Pre-Amp all Rock, and Rock Hard with wall shaking bass! They will sing with the vocals, and in movies explosions can be felt! Maybe I just have all the right components to make it work? Or maybe my ears are just biased?

Who cares, Tubes Rule! Down with the Solid State!

Tubes have bass, but often characteristically different sounding than SS due to higher output impedance. More attention must be paid to matching tube gear all the way up the chain. Higher impedance speakers (true 8 ohm or higher, somewhat rare) are typically most desirable.

Also bass requires more power exponentially at lower frequencies. Large tube amps needed are big, heavy expensive, and use lots of tubes and are harder to maintain properly over time (tubes can be expensive).

The alternative is higher efficiency speakers to lower power needs. This is a good approach, But I have not yet heard a flea powered SET amp drive high efficiency speakers optimally (perhaps adequately) for rock music IMHO. I do believe it is possible, but even at shows, vendors tend to steer away from rock/pop music when demoing flea powered amps with HE speakers, probably for good reason. THis is not their forte IMHO, but I do believe it possible. Just a lot harder and maybe a lot more expensive to achieve similar results. I doubt tubes are needed to max out rock/pop due to the largely electronic nature of the music to start with, but it might make sense for fans of other forms of music and tube sound that also want good rock/pop.

Soft clipping nature of tube amps provides the illusion of better bass for fewer watts, however the amp is often clipping, just in a manner that is less offending to listeners than most SS amps.

Implying a hifi system task distinction between reproduced jazz and whatever people call rock is really weird to me. There is every bit as much dynamic juice in jazz as rock, although rock is often more compressed and "mono-dynamic." "Flea watt" amps are never good for loudness except very nearfield (or using insanely efficient speakers) regardless of musical type...but dynamic orchestral music and well recorded modern jazz kicks it just as much as any rock, and often is much MORE dynamic. John Scofield albums can be funkier than most rock stuff and will push a lower powered amp over the edge in seconds if you think you need higher dbs...or you're drunk. If you listen to thumpy dubstep or hippity hop I doubt you own a "flea watt" amp anyway, but my 60 watt pc tube amp and 150 watt sub light up my listening room fine, be it Jethro Tull, Monk, or Mahler. And I agree that a reasonable wattage tube amp often sounds better when cranked than a SS amp because it clips warmer.

Wolf,

I guess my point in a nutshell is that all music can be done well either way if done right. Its what it takes to do it right that matters. The devil as usual is in the details. I find impedance matching considerations most important for electronic music. Most modern electronic music should sound tight and powerful, not loose and flabby. Acoustic music is a different matter. A little looseness and flabbiness there might actually sound good to some, but I am finding what works well for electronic music also works well for me with the rest. Power/efficiency matching and needs is a totally different and equally important issue.

Yeah, I don't have a S.E.T. Tube amp, I have the brawnier Bob Carver Cherry 180M Mono blocks, the amps have 12 KT88 tubes and put out about 200 watts per channel, and my speakers are not all that inefficient, 91db.

How ever one day I would like to try out a pair of S.E.T. Amps.