See, now tube amplifiers are all the rage again - it was class d about 3 years ago - it was solid state about 6 months ago - whenever i have tubes - i want solid state, whenever i have solid state - then i want tubes - then ill try class d in the meantime
@smargo Tubes have been ’back’ since sometime in the 1970s when ARC was founded as Electronic Industries. Later ARC was spun off and Electronic Industries made circuit boards instead. During the 1980s Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound liked the ARC tube amps and so tube amps ramped up. Class D really didn’t get a foothold until about 2000 although it has been around since the 1960s (and originally proposed in the 1950s). Lately class D has advanced enough that it can have some of the better quality of tubes without the downsides. Solid state (class A or AB) has been doing much better as well.
So I think tube amps are on borrowed time; the war in Ukraine has driven tube prices up worldwide. Right now tube producers can’t make them fast enough; but as the incursion of class D amplifiers into the musical instrument market (which is the main buyer of tubes, not high end audio) continues, things will look very different in the next ten years.
But here’s the tricky bit. The spec sheets we’ve all seen on amplifiers really don’t tell us what we need to know (how they will sound) and so we’ve all seen the phenomena where it measures well but sounds bad. That isn’t a failing of measurements in general; its a failing of having the right measurements so we can correlate them with what we hear ( you need to know the harmonic spectrum created by the amp at one Watt, whether distortion rises with frequency, and what the distortion spectrum looks like at higher power levels for starters and then you need to know what that means to the ear).
So the spec sheets have mostly been marketing and in that regard have a lot in common with the Emperor’s New Clothes. Because we’ve essentially been lied to for so many decades, any audiophile knows you simply have to take it home and see what you think in your own system.