REF 3 In My System?

By ARC on their website.

What's the advantage of using tubes if the product sounds like a solid state design. I'm assuming there is a real advantage.

Cmalak, good explanation, but I wasn't thinking about old style tubey sound. I'm thinking along the line of something Tim da Paravinici may have said about how he could get tubes to sound like solid state and vice versa. My perception is that tubes, even in preamps, require more attention from a user than equivalent solid state designs. When designers try to remove the added maintenance of tubes they end up with complex designs that defeats one of the main advantages, at least in my eyes, of tubes which is circuit simplicity. Added complexity leads to increased costs. Here I'm thinking of the recent ARC or VTL designs.

In the back of my mind I'm wondering whether some tube manufacturers really want to make solid state designs, but customer resistance limits their flexibility. With electric guitarist, who as a group never abandoned tubes and are more responsible for the continuance of tube production than audiophiles, they want to "hear" the tube. The tube is an effect processor that they purposely use to create a "sound". Tubes are also very common on the pro audio engineering side. There too the users want to hear the tube effect of added spaciousness, smooth highs and a nice breakup characteristic when driven hard. I also would place audiophiles in that group of people who want to hear the tube. I see it in the extensive tube rolling activity and the advocacy of specific tubes as sounding better than others.

Although I'm a little suspicious, I'm not convinced it's purely a marketing driven thing and I'm just wondering what engineering reasons a manufacturer would pick tubes over equivalent solid state designs if in the end they both sound the same.