Tubes? Transistors? Which are better?

Theory is a wonderful thing. Even a necessary thing if you are a designer. But theory is only useful if it reliably explains/predicts reality. I used to think the theory of tube pre and SS power seemed to make sense. But I tried just about every SS power amp I could get my hands on before reluctantly trying tube amps. I found a tube amp that not only had a better midrange than the SS amps, but outperformed them in the highs and the bass (and on low impedence Thiel and Martin-Logan speakers). Faster bass and more slam than an SS power amp? It didn't fit the theory, but so what? I have now settled on a tube power amp and a solid state preamp - against all my preconceptions, but in tune with the music.

I do use room treatments Carl, but one of my rooms (I run two systems) is problemmatic and hard to deal with (the main problems being squareness 24'*26', and hard floor). But with the narrow vertical dispersion of Martin-Logans I get very good results sitting about 9 feet away in this room. By the way, I was not referring to your comments on output impedence in my earlier post, but to the seemingly generally accepted wisdom of tube pre with ss amp. My fault for dropping into the conversation out of context. I switched from ss to tube power amps for a simple reason. When I went to live concerts I was always struck by a kind of beauty in mid-range instruments (particularly voices), that did not seem to be present in my recordings. When I heard my current tube amps - I recognised the beauty right away - and knew it to be real, and not a coloration. The fact that the amps gave me better bass than the ss amps was an unexpected bonus. The problem of course is that I may never know whether the same thing might have been achieved by the change of some other component.