This discussion is interesting because it is circling around what I have come to believe is a central truth in HIFI. That is, there are two ways to go, true fidelity and good sound. These are not mutually exclusive as that statement might sound at first. The first makes good recordings sound good and bad recording sound bad, the second “improves” recordings making the bad ones less deficient to the listener, while good recordings still are pleasurable. The second path is embodied by tubes, class A solid State amplification and R to R style decks. Basically, to one extent or the other these devices round off the hard edges of a bad recording and introduce “ good“ distortion that pleases our ears. I don’t think one path is better than the other but it took me a while to realize that this is the basic choice and that I might want to have a systems that pursue each of these goals separately and not confuse things by mingling elements of each within one system. Or if you do mingle be aware of what you were doing so I as to achieve a desired goal as opposed to working against yourself.
