To me this is also a specious point, the idea of accuracy in recorded reproduction. I’m looking for something I like. I don’t want a stereo limited by only sounding good with any particular music or record label. It’s not about accuracy, to me accuracy is anti musical. I want the music I listen to- to be engaging. Accurate is irrelevant, in fact I don’t think it exists. Perhaps an extreme view point. You get into set amps because you want to experience the music not judge the recording.
@yaluaka It appears to me that you are conflating ’accurate’ with ’anti musical’ as emphasized above. That isn’t how its supposed to work; if the amp isn’t musical its also isn’t accurate. IOW if you want the most engaging presentation, the amp will be both musical and accurate. That exists. When the amp is musical but not accurate (as is the case with most SETs) then while it might be engaging, its not as engaging as it could be, because you’re really not hearing the music properly.
For some decades now the solid state community has beat up on tubes by saying that solid state is more accurate. But most of the time those amps were not musical because they made distortion to which the ear is keenly attuned. So those amps had ’low distortion’ but sounded harsh and bright- not at all engaging.
As a designer, once you understand how the ear perceives sound and how that relates to distortion amps make, you can design an amplifier that is both accurate and musically engaging. If you really understand how this works, it doesn’t even have to be a tube amp; the ’sonic signature’ of any amplifier is also its distortion signature. So if you can get a solid state amp to have the same sort of distortion as a tube amp, it will sound like a tube amp. That’s only one of the implications of understanding how this all works.
Put yet another way, there are tube amps that are more engaging than the best SETs, with wider bandwidth (read: more and deeper bass impact) and greater power at the same time.
Its not about judging the recording so much as it is enjoying the music. We’re on the same page with that. It sounds to me as if you’ve been exposed to too many amusical amps that were purported as ’accurate’ when they were not. Harsh and bright to me a far more egregious coloration than the ever-lovin’ 2nd harmonic of tube amps. But if you can get that 2nd harmonic down, you can get more detail, since distortion obscures detail. And you can do this without it being bright.
