Solid State vs. Tubes - What if Transistors came first?

I see, very interesting. I am not a technical person and have no clue.
No wonder, tubes have such a cult following. 

Hi Inna,
Tubes are not for everyone, I refused to use them for decades. I had worked on some tube equipment cameras and early vidio tape recorders, 3 inch tape on reels much like old reel to reel tape recorders. Video pickup was all done with tubes until CCD came along in the late 1980s, and various red, green, and blue video pickup tubes didn't seem to last that long, so I wasn't a tube lover. I did some mods for a friend, he had LS15, and LS16 Audio Research preamps. I installed soft recovery diodes in them, replaced some power supply capacitors and bypassed the capacitors in the tube stage, I was hooked after listening to them, and bought an LS15 for myself. Schitt Audio came along, and I bought their Yggdrasil DAC. I was so impressed that I went on to buy a Freya. Well, one of the guys who bought a Freya went on to buy a preamp made by Roy Mottram, and blown up by long time Citation and McIntosh tube refurbisher/modifier Don Sachs. Not being a tube guy, I figured that if I bought the SP14 kit from Roy, by the time I had mine tweaked out, which would be a learning process, I'd have more into it than if I just bought Don Sachs' version, so I bought a preamp from Don. Roy was in the middle of a move anyway, so it's also true that I was impatient and just wanted to be done. Well, the DS2, as Don calls it, so blew away the Freya, that I was hooked. Don's amp costs over 3K, and Upscale Audio was selling PrimaLuna Prologue Fives for 1100, so I bought one. It sounded better to me than any of my SS amps, especially once I got a set of Gold Lion KT88s, with Amperex 9 pins for drivers. I still lacked the deep soundstage that I was looking for and experience told me that octal drivers would sound better, so I went back to Roy Mottram. He, as luck would have it, was selling his personal amp, he didn't need the wattage and was down sizing. Well, I bought it, and it sounds awesome. I do intend to do a few things to it, but at this point I suppose I should have just purchased Don's amp and skipped the PrimaLuna, but then I wouldn't have learned as much as I have about tube amplifiers. Frankly either of Roy's kits, the ST70 or the ST120 with octal drivers is an awesome deal, as is his SP14 preamp. Unfortunately I always want to squeeze that last 10 percent out of audio equipment....

Lous, great hearing your story.  I tried the Prima Luna as well but found it very underwhelming.  Owned a lot of tube gear and solid state, enjoyed them all but settled on Krell.  Warm enough, great soundstaging and very low noise floor.  Tone and dynamics are great as well.  Tubes have always left a bit of haze over the soundfield to my ears...but they do have great action and micro dynamics...can flesh things out a bit!

Hi Dave,
I was never willing to part with Krell or Levinson type of money. I suspect the haze may be a parts issue, with good caps, resistors, and such I am not hearing any haze. One other reason I have stayed away from Krell and Levinson was circuit complexity, it scares me. Certainly if properly designed, it theoretically isn’t an issue, but reality and theory are not alway in synch. That said, I have certainly heard too many good reports to completely write off transistors, especially Krell and Levinson gear. I’d especially like to hear them with Black Gate caps, but my bins are nearly empty... Anyway, it doesn’t ultimately matter if your or my stereo sounds like crap, as long as we are content that’s what matters, though I would love to check out other systems, but I think that I have maxed out my stereo budget! ;-)

I love guys that drop a crap bomb, then disaffirm it. 👀