A tubes vs. Solid State question.

Great thread! I suppose it's simply a matter of taste and what one finds to be appealing characteristics of sound. The "organic" feel/sound of tube components can be quite inviting as can some of the better designed SS components. Oh the beauty of expression, how grand it is!

peter jasz

Nrchy - I think that people just like to categorize and rank things it's not easy to. What are the three best Beatles songs? Who's better, the Who or Zeppelin? What was the best movie from Jan 2001 to Jan 2002? It's all good, I say, just different music for different moods and you can in a sense have it all.

I guess one difference with picking amps is that practically most people have to settle on putting their money into one for their stereo - so you ultimately do have to make a ranking, although maybe people take too big a step into "definitive ranking" territory.

There are aspects of SS that I prefer over tubes and vice versa. Certain things about tubes make the music sound more "right" to me, but other people's ears pick up on other cues and factors that make for "right" to them.

I think that SS or tube nazis tend to overlook that someone else may value the benefits of, or not be able to overlook the disadvantages of, one over the other in a way that's different from their way of listening. Think about Lord of the Rings fanatics who thought that it should sweep every award at last year's Oscars - I see why *you* like it, but that don't mean it's the best movie ever, period.

Nrchy, I am "the few who act like SS people are tin-eared or have never heard tubes so they do not realize how much better tube sound" the guy. SS are suck! LOL. Oops, ladies' around? Welcome to A'Gon Anne, can I get you some thing to drink? ;-)

Judit; I just threaded into the quicksilver ls review-It explains my current pre situation.
Besides budget pre's, I haven't really checked out pre's too much. I have never really been a fan of pre's because to me it always seemed like a lot of money to spend on something that is only going to degrade the sound. (I can buy a volume and put it anywhere I want, you know.) I am currently a man without a real power amp, and no dough, so I gotta use what's around the house (a luxman). I got the pre when I tried out some pse studio V's, and found that the input was such that they seemed to need a pre, so I borrowed the quicksilver, and it found a home and the pse's went back.
I remain ready for my christmas check, and enough versatility to try any power amp I might run into to drive a pair of vandy 2ci's, with any length of ic, passive or active. Then, I will decide on whether or not I evan want a pre, or if ss or tube.
Thing is, when it comes to cheaper equipment, I can't stand the distortions caused by tubes, where I can live with the distortions caused by ss. Dynaco's, old marantz, and sorry guys, McIntosh, don't cut it for me. (notice i DID capitalize Mac.) I much prefer older rotel, I'm living comfortably with the luxman, parasound, and the like. But note that these are in the bargain catagory, with of coarse less perfection. Most of the systems that I have heard that stand out in my memory have been tube, so I'm going to aim higher and give it a try.
I have lots of experience with tubes in my guitar amps, being of audiophile sickness, so I am pretty familiar with different tones and distortions associated with tubes. SS in that realm I don't like, and I'm not just being a typical "hip" guitar player. I find ss fatiguing, evan hybrids, and those that I would consider good sounding. In the stereo world, less fatiguing seems to be a buzz phrase for tubes, so perhaps I will discover something to that.

Nrchy, it is fairly easy to make tubes sound good and costs like Hell in time, effort and expense to make solid state perform worth a darned.....Other than the transconductance amplifier Audible Illusions came up with over a decade ago there is really not much new in tube or linear solid state design....I find it a challenge to build something that sounds like and measures spectrally like a triode using a solid state design.....