Hi Muralman. Do you like the Scintilla better? I assume the Pass 600's are eating them up. I hope you are dizzy with FUN!
Tok, we've been dancing around about this - you have responded a couple of times to my posts where I've said that tubes are superior in the best systems by saying that there is no difference in that context, attributing any difference to system matching, ie skill in matching. I respect your posts and you, so I have refrained from responding.
Tok and others, first, yes, some tube systems sound mushy, etc. because the people putting them together are still learning (or don't have the $, or just don't want to spend that much). For instance, I can't stand 6550-based amps (although I did get a hot-rodded Jadis Defy to sound alright with 4 matched Siemmens drivers, arggh!), I dumped an ARC VT100 (Mk I then w/ the Infini caps later) in three months, and would much prefer a Pass SS or post MkII Plinius to those. Similarly, I can understand wanting a Plinius MkIII vs a Rogue. But we have to be careful of mixing contexts in search of confirming our experience.
Second, yes, everything is context-dependant, but that doesn't mean that everything is equal. Although this sentiment has that warm fuzzy inclusive feel about it - its called radical subjectivism - that's not how the world works. There are hierarchies, which is, of course, why we are talking about differences.
Third, you have to be careful when you talk about "systems" to not mix in digital performance as a support for your position. When talking about tubes v. SS at the present zenith of performance, I think we understand we are predominantly talking about pre's and amps. I tend to agree with the people who say tubes are a euphonic sauve in digital applications (if no tubes downstream, a required one in many systems).
Depending upon a person's given personality, disposable income and spending inclination, type of music, need for convenience / recoil from hassle, hearing acuity and will to become involved in the musical meaning (not the same thing...), etc, all contexts, I recommend different systems.
It comes down to what Jeffga calls "magic", which a way of expressing the ineffable in words. This deep experience of listening is ineffable because it occurs in the mind before words. At deeper levels of listening, more objective qualities of sound that are more noticebale to the mind at surface levels become less important to catalyzing the listening experience. At these deep levels, the mind is more attuned to existential discontinuities - how sound moves in space symmetrically, the continuousness between source projection and surrounding space, the simulcrum of space infusing the projection and not only bounding it, the lent perception of depth proceeding infinitely, the integration of transient, core harmonic and decay, and then, all of these integrated with each other. The result is not some-thing that the thinking mind can put into language and readily communicate, but it is an experience that exists and can be replicated with the right system and a mind willing to go there.
In my experience, while SS has made many strides - at first in terms of distortion, then harmonics, then space - it does not approach a properly matched NOS based tube system in its ability to offer an integrated simulcrum that catalyzes the mind towards this deep listening experience.
This knowledge is, of course, state-specific, meaning that while I can go on like this, if you haven't experienced this then the mind that wants to stay where it is tends to deny the existence - even, illogically, the possibility of its existence - and, strangely, even though that same mind has itself developed further and further abilities to listen deeper into the meaning of the music.
There are some very wonderful SS systems - meaning pre and amp - that are progressively allowing us to experience greater meaning in music, but that, in and of itself, is not an argument for equality in systems that catalyze the deepest musical experience.
Someone said recently here that he didn't care if a coat hanger got him there (Tok?) - matter is matter is matter - but the arrangement of matter we call a "tube" is still superior in reproducing the above existential qualities I've cited vis-a-vis SS, and to which I've alluded are inherently determitive of the ability to reach those deep levels, ie deep existential perception requires a threshold of a simulcrum of those qualities before the experience is, well, experienced.
What is equal?
We are all equal in our potential to experience music, or stereos, or flowers, or...
