Why did you lean one way or the other

I had never experienced a tube amp in my system until 1999. Once I heard that sound I knew it was what I wanted. I was almost exclusively a tube guy, with the exception of a stint with some Maggies, after that. But I came across an SMc modded DNA 0.5 a couple of years ago. After sending it back for another round of mods, I was absolutely floored by the sound. It's good enough to not miss tubes, and that's mighty praise indeed.

+ several on tube preamp & SS amp. Love the NOS tube rolling on pre. 

I have been into audio for 45 years, the last 25 of those has been with mostly tube gear.   

Overall I have had great luck with minimal fuss.  I've had tube gear from vtl, cj, Sonic Frontiers , Anthem , Zesto ...  most of it has been great.   

In 2023 I wanted to set up a second system,   I had several pieces of gear displaced from my main rig.    A Vault 2i, REL sub, and a pre and amp.   

It was starting to take up too much room so I ended up ditching the tube gear and bought a Cyrus i7XR amp.   

It was such a great sounding amp I replaced my speakers and now have a system that is compact and sounds great.    One button to power up  instead of 10 boxes to turn on , this system gets a lot of use .   Makes no sense to power up a bunch of tube gear to listen for an hour or so.   

When I do have time to listen for an extended period I'll fire up the main rig .

Had several very good SS setups including Chord, Luxman, Sansui & Tandberg all with great success. The 1st piece of tube gear I bought on a flyer was a Sonic Frontiers SFL-1 and it was "on" with tubes for me from that day forward. I am today using a tube amp, preamp & DAC with my only SS piece being a Simaudio Moon phono stage. To me, the entire tube biasing, rolling & exotic tube hunting is all fun and keeps me engaged; like record shopping still does. I do prefer tubes and have used Aesthetix, Audiomat, Shindo, Line Magnetic, Canor among others & each time I move to a different tube piece has been a solid step up in most every way. Just my experience but not going back to SS anytime soon 

I just read the enjoyable thread on streamers with displays. It seemed there that most thought displays to have limited value. Despite ours being an auditory hobby, there are, however, valuable visual elements. Enjoying what @soix referred to as "baubles on a bull" is a lovely facet of hifi pleasure. In addition to their sonic characteristics and how they appeal to the ears of one afficianado or another, tubes may also have a visual appeal, glowing like ... something on a bull or his mate, and letting us regress in a psychoanalytic fashion to the oral stage of development in which we enjoyed bliss at our mother's breast. (Hoping not to be banned from Audiogon for comparing tubes to Freud's cigars.)