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

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.

I run two different SS amps in two systems.

My main system uses Bel Canto Reference 1000m Class D monoblocks, 500w/ch, with a tube pre-amp friendly 100 kohm input impedance (unbalanced), 1000 damping factor fed from ARC sp16 tube pre-amp driving large OHM Walsh speakers that are known to benefit from high damping. THe sound is fast, vivid, powerful and articulate at ANY volume with any music. About as good as it gets I would say

ONce when the BCs were in the shop, I used my TAD 125 Hibachi monoblocks as a sub in their place. THese are 180w/ch SS and designed to provide tube like sound in a SS design. These have significantly lower damping and lower input impedance than the BCs. The sound is also quite good though not as much muscle and slightly less articulate in the bass compared to the BCs. The difference in sound corresponds exactly as I would expect from the differences in power and impedance ratings. You would likely not realize you were missing anything with the TADs unless you heard them in comparison to the BCs. THey still sounded really good, but not as good as the BCs.

I also have smaller OHM Walsh speakers in my second system. These have smaller Walsh drivers that are not as challenging for an amp to get a vice like grip on the driver for optimum control, articulation, detail, etc. They work even better with the TADs.

The TADs do have a lovely tonality in the midrange that I fancied compared to the BCs, I suppose part of their SS tube sound design.

Just an example in my case of how these kinds of specs actually turned out to be useful in choosing gear that works really well together.