Seeking best sounding El-34 tubes for my power amplifier

@kjl1065, would tend to agree with lowtubes. But before you dive in and make your purchase, you may want to measure the plate voltage on your amps. Am not familiar with your amps. If they run 400-450 on the plate you may be ok with the PSVANEs. If higher take a pass on the PSVANEs or any china source tube. They will not hold up. Some of the higher priced VANEs are really nice sounding tubes but there are several huge tradeoffs.1. ELF- expect to have 20-40% ELFs with them. so a person needs to buy plenty of spares. 2. Tube to tube variability. Matched quads or sextets from China mean very little. You will probably have to buy a Maximatcher and double check the power tubes.  A few years ago had a pair of monoblocks with 8 EL34s per side. Bought 2 dozen VANE EL34s to insure I had plenty of spares. After the first six months, 30% of them had either shorted out or died. I had to dig into the replacement stock much faster than expected. 

With the Russian EL34s, 6CA7s, reliability is quite good. 

Sophia Electric RL-34 tubes have a clear detailed sound, but they are expensive. You can find them on ebay.

CRYOTONE EL34 (wathenspeakers.com) are super reliable, low/no noise, crystal clear, and run much “cooler” than normal or NOS tubes. The latter may be important if you’re running 16 of them! The CRYOTONE’s are very versatile and make a wide variety of music sound great. If you want the more old-fashioned, lush and liquidy mid range I like the Mullards, too. 
 

I don’t have any experience with PSvane but I have some friends that use them and like them. Honestly, with what I know about tubes today, I would get whichever power tubes are good sounding and a good price. I believe that if you are using a lot of power tubes in your amplifier. It will be much reasonable and cheaper to buy reasonably priced EL 34 power tubes. You can tweak the system and make small adjustments to get the sound that you want by changing the smaller input and drive tubes along with the various options of cables that are on the market. For example, when I got my Conrad Johnson premiere four years ago it came with all Chinese tubes Chinese EL 34 tubes. The first thing I said to myself was that I was going to pull out all those cheap Chinese tubes and put in my good tubes, but after listening to the amplifier and hearing nothing wrong with the way, it sounded with the Chinese EL 34 tubes I left those tubes in there, and in fact, I purchased more of the same exact set of those Chinese tubes. So now I have at least 20 in stock of those same Chinese tubes as back ups for My Conrad Johnson premium four amp. I also own a Conrad Johnson premier one B amplifier. That amplifier uses 12 EL 34. On that amplifier I am using all JJEL 34 tubes. I made adjustments with the input and the driver tubes along with the cables so that ultimately I would get I will be pleased with the sound. On my VTL amplifiers, which are custom-made with the larger transformers and output, transformers, and all the capacitors inside all upgraded, including the wiring, all upgraded to the top line components on the VTL amplifiers I’m using all Russian EL 34 tubes. And I chose all these various different tubes because these amps that I got came with those tubes and when I listen to, they sounded fine so I kept the tubes that were in there. Now I have a lot of small amplifiers that take only 4 EL34 tubes. All my small amplifiers those are the ones that I put the Teslas, the Mullards, the Amperex, all the special expensive EL 34s go in my smaller amplifiers that only require four power tubes. All my big amplifiers that take 16 EL 34s, 12 EL 34s, or 8EL 34 I use whatever reasonably priced EL 34 tube I can get as long as it’s a good performer. So if I were you, if my amplifier takes a lot of power tubes, just get a really good EL34 that’s reasonably priced and put more attention on rolling the input and driver tubes. 

Well, it also depends on how much you use your amp. If you've got the funds I would talk with Brent from Audiotubes, he will get you some great vintage tubes for probably $150-$200 each. 

I bought a matched quad of Mullards XF2 for my VAC Avatar SE on usaudiomart for $500. Not truly new but test as new. Brent had them NOS for $200 each, I decided to save a little, but next time I will probably get them from him, as I did all my 12AX7 and 12AU7 tubes. He is very honest and easy to work with, not to mention that he knows this stuff.