Describe ube sound vs solid state

I just put two Gold Lion 12AX7's (reissue) in my modest Vac Avatar and spent the weekend basking in the sound they brought to album after album, revealing new attributes and making the performance glow with life. A $70 exercise, in the direct signal path, that is not possible with SS. I had been considering a big Mc452, but I now think something would be lost regardless of how good that is. Maybe because it would just sit there with no interaction except off/on.

The only Pass I've heard at home was the Aleph0 and matching Pre. I found it boring, but could easily have been a speaker mismatch. Then they exited my price range.

Amazon. Resistance is futile. $35 each.

Audiolabyrinth, thanks (I think.) This is one of the joys of tubes for an audiophile...anticipation and interaction, without breaking the bank or going snake oil. I can look forward to hearing the Mullards, and there's three 12AU7 tubes in the circuit I am beginning to research...Mullards or Gold Lions? To me, there is a bliss in the right tube deployment that I've never heard in SS, although I've owned Perreaux, McCormack, and Classe, and auditioned Levinson and Pass.

Audiolabyrinth, I'm not a big tube roller, so my perception may be narrow compared to others.

The Gold Lions replaced TungSol's in the line stage of the original VAC Avatar. I had been sniffing around the McIntosh offerings and noticed a pattern of users swapping out the factory tubes for the Lions, and a consensus of improvement. I was curious.

At first, I thought the top end sounded brittle, and I had lost some bass. This changed after just a few days of burn. The first new thing I noticed was a sustained organ note as a track faded out, when before it had gone to black.

Holistically, the sound seemed more liquid. Things moved in and out of the sound-scape with a sense of holding a water balloon instead of a basketball. The oddest thing was standing in front of the amp with speakers to the side and having a sense of much more music surrounding the speakers, instead of just projecting forward. Strange.

Specifically, on something like Roy Orbison singing, "Only the Lonely," the backup singers were clearly delineated by number and voice, which greatly increased the pleasure of the performance. I always thought the Janis Ian album, "Breaking Silence," was really good in terms of sound and craftsmanship, even though Janis's voice is soft. With the Gold Lions it becomes spectacularly good. Finally, I played trumpet, and the Empire Brass sound more metallic in the right way.

All this could be device/circuit dependent, so YMMV and all that, but this is kinda/sorta what I experienced.

For me, the difference is arrived at by induction rather than deduction. I was never inclined towards tubes or particularly wanted them. But after listening to many different systems over many years I realized the ones that I loved listening to all had tubes--Jadis tubes, Manley tubes, Atmasphere tubes, VAC tubes, and McIntosh tubes. In the mix was Levinson, Goldman, Pass, Classe, and McCormack solid state, which often impressed me with power and authority, but never sent me into a state of "thoughtless joy" with a yearning for it not to end.

If I try to analyze it, the feeling is similar to hearing a chord sequence such as I-IV-V resolve back to the root. There is something so pleasing in that completion that is similar to the feeling from tubes, whereas solid state was more of a matter-of-fact I-IV-V that stopped short of that final completeness. Solid state had more of a Joe Friday "just the facts" while tubes were more of film noir fascination.

So I guess I'm saying that tubes have provided a musical completeness that my brain seems to crave, and this sense of completeness is the difference.

Charles: FWIW, I recall my encounters with ss in analytical terms--"the Class'e seemed more solid, but the McCormack seemed faster," but I recall my encounters with tubes warmly as cherished experiences, and I don't compare one tube experience to another. This makes me think the tube experience was profoundly musical, free of checklists and ratings. This is only realized as I look back over the experiences. Perhaps distance is required to see the pattern, and I have little confidence I could discern this difference in the moment.