While it's true that watts is watts whether tube or solid state, the ear's sensitivity to different types of distortion is what's coming into play in a "tube watts vs solid state watts" discussion.
Tubes soft-clip; that is, they produce less high-order harmonic distortion when driven into clipping. High-order harmonic distortion is quite audible and objectionable even in fairly small amounts. Generally speaking, tube amps can play louder than equivalant-power solid state amps before the ear detects the distortion. This matters because usually the problem that's most noticeable in clipping is the distortion rather than the dynamic compression.
Given that recorded music can have an average-to-crest ratio of 20 dB or more (which would call for a 100-fold peak in amplifier power), clipping can and does happen more often than we'd probably like to admit. In theory enough reserve power to avoid clipping would be great, but I'm not sure that's always practical.
Duke
Tubes soft-clip; that is, they produce less high-order harmonic distortion when driven into clipping. High-order harmonic distortion is quite audible and objectionable even in fairly small amounts. Generally speaking, tube amps can play louder than equivalant-power solid state amps before the ear detects the distortion. This matters because usually the problem that's most noticeable in clipping is the distortion rather than the dynamic compression.
Given that recorded music can have an average-to-crest ratio of 20 dB or more (which would call for a 100-fold peak in amplifier power), clipping can and does happen more often than we'd probably like to admit. In theory enough reserve power to avoid clipping would be great, but I'm not sure that's always practical.
Duke