Anyone has a reference system where amplification is SS ?

micelavigne I agree withemergingsoul that your system is a masterpiece  of thought and effort. It it is a good thing you have only 10 years involved and not 20 years otherwise you might need a bigger room.

Folks this all subjective and there are no right or wrong answers in regards to the question put forth in this thread.

Its a known fact as soon as you power up tubes, especially in tube amps, they are wearing themselves out.  I don't need that kind of concern atttached to my system. I got more important things to worry about like room conditioning, cabling, speaker positioning and etc.  If i use tubes it will be in low level devices like preamps, phono preamp etc and I will do that. But I still like solid state preamps a great deal for certain music and I have a couple of them as well.

inna, yes indeed you will have good sound with tube amps but they cannot be left on all the time and thats where I'm coming from.

I do have a solid state Conrad Johnson preamp that does an amazing job with the midrange, especially when it is left on for several days. It makes wonder why I should bother with a tube preamp when it sounds that wonderful. But when I insert the tube preamp it sounds pretty amazing in a different way. From time to time I like to switch up preamps because it keeps things interesting.