Can tube preamps be as 'detailed' sounding as ss?

Atmasphere...But, if a tramsistor power amplifier has well designed clip limiting, it will, when overdriven, produce a waveform that looks just like a tube amplifier.

Sean, tubes *are* as fast as transistors, else vacuum-tube radio circuits could not exist. There are many things that limit bandwidth in tube *designs*, but tubes are not the culprit (check out the risetimes on our website sometime). Soft clipping is caused by space charge effects (a cloud of electrons that occurs near the plate of the tube) which is a phenomena of a tube near saturation. It has nothing to do with bandwidth.

Eldartford, there are transistor amps now that have a 'soft clipping' feature, but clipping distortion is a gross manifestation of the effects that I am referring to. Unfortunately these 'soft clipping' amps still retain the transistor/odd-ordered harmonic signature that the ear detects so easily. This is my own opinion, but I feel this issue of higher/odd ordered harmonics is one of the more important issues that seperates the subjectivists from the objectivists.

Atmasphere, A pox on all foreign harmonics, for they are all a type of signal pollution. I can hear tube coloration as easily as solid state irritation.

Tvad: Because the question and the discussion may please the questioner and the discussers. Chatting about audio is a wholly different activity than listening to it, enjoyable for different reasons.