Tube Power vs Solid State Power

A watt is a watt. 
See here for threads on the subject. 
https://forum.audiogon.com/search/index?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=Tube+watts

Thank you … I should have searched 1st before posting but see others too have been fed the same line. 

It has to do with how they distort.

As mentioned watts are watts, but I do think there are a couple of other potential factors to consider that may lead to the "tube watts are louder" perception.

Wattage rating aside, and SS or tubes aside, well made amps tend to have better dynamics, better clarity, better control, and are better able to meet the demands of driving a loudspeaker than mediocre amps, so tend to sound good and have excellent impact even when pushed a bit. I suspect that many lower wattage tube amps (ie 5-40 watts) are built to a higher quality standard than most smaller wattage SS amps, due in part to specs and marketing influence. Good SS amps tend to have higher output because it’s easy and fairly inexpensive to increase that output during the design phase. While I do think there are differences in how they sound, and tube amps are known to have different distortion characteristics than SS amps (see HIlde45’s link), given comparable build quality, I think a good lower watt SS amp can sound as loud as a good lower watt tube amp.  I suspect it's often more of an apples to oranges comparison.

Both are great vs is getting old depends on your taste and speakers.

Would rather have the Carver crimson 350’s than the Sunfire or my very long wait monos from another company, and those 1st edition emotiva xpa-1 monos. 
350 Watts of tube power is bada$$ !!

 I remember years ago, getting any amp with 300WPC+ was always near 4K +$ or so. My first amp was a Onkyo m-504 which I paid this audio shop what I could for months and months and months, no interest, I worked at a audio shop making 90$/week, so it took me a long time for my first amp, also purchased an Onkyo dx-7500 top tier CD player demo model. 
  Used my tx-890 top o the line as a preamp. Amp lasted about 2 1/2 years before the right channel binding posts literally melted to molten plastic. 

Watts are Watts as a standard of measure. But add a speaker and the game changes.
Hard to view a amplifier in a "vacuum".  Most I see are connected to a wide variety of speakers with many different demands.  ;)      Oíche Samhain

Power supplies within amps have great impact upon watts ratings. All things being equal, amp with superior PS will have superior micro and macro dynamics.

Tube amps tend to be optimistically rated such that an amp rated at 40 watts will only output that amount with quite a bit of distortion; in that sense tube amp watts are less, not more than solid state watts. But, tube amps distort more gracefully (mostly low order distortion), and they tend to compress (not get proportionately louder) rather then sounding harsh, so one might be tempted to push them closer to their rated power.  To me, great sounding tube amps sound more alive, particularly at lower volume levels, than top solid state amps, so one is satisfied with playing at a lower power level.  Hence, the tube amp tends to sound more powerful than its rating.

I found this short article to be very good.  


https://www.caryaudio.com/2018/06/04/vacuum-tube-vs-solid-state/

If solid state amps had the same power supplies as most tube amps, you would not see much difference. There are very few low power solid state amps with big power supplies so it's hard to compare.  

You know larryi2, that is a good representation of what actually happens, as I understand it. The type of harmonics are the perfect imperfection that MY ears lend themselves to. Most SS are Brittle, Harsh and (seem) bright, to a point of fatigue. Tubes just don't do it..

It is how they measure distortion, and how much distortion there is at any given time. THEY (manufactures) do all kinds of things to print a bigger number, or lower distortion ratings.. There are a LOT of weird numbers flying around for sure.. 

I like when a manufacture says. 100 watts minimum @ 8ohms. 20hz to 20khz with .01 THD/IMD

https://www.nti-audio.com/en/support/know-how/lets-clear-up-some-things-about-distortion

A watt is a watt, it's AFTER the fact anyway...

Regards

Tubes distort on odd order harmonics if I recall. Whereas SS distorts on even order which is less desirable to the ears. Thus, some believe the tubes sound better

Read this:
https://evanuik.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/the-cool-sound-of-tubes.pdf

Not true because amplifiers do not put out power to the speakers -- speakers consume power. Amplifier power output is the dissipation of heat. To simplify, if a speaker presents a 4-ohm load to a 12-volt ac signal, the speaker draws 3-amps from the amplifier and converts 36 watts of electrical power to sound power and heat. If the amplifier can pass that 3-amp current through, then the speaker doesn’t care whether it comes from transistors or a transformer.

That’s totally silly and so is the question.
Tube designs just distort more pleasingly like analog compared to digital. Just keep the reigns tight.
What falls faster in a vacuum, pigeon feathers or lead pipes.
Doh!

The question isn’t silly if one does not know and is seeking guidance…
I just wish the hard core guys on this site would provide more guidance in this hobby with their experience of higher grade products to the Mid Fi’ers who now would like to move up to Hi-Fi rather than see it as an opportunity to tell people their set ups are crap. You have to walk before you can run, you have find what you like and build from there. Growth is best achieved if mentored and keep in mind, most manufacturers believe due to technology taking it’s toll on this industry, component audio is a dying market, so by scaring away newbies rather than encouraging it’s growth hurts us all who enjoy this hobby in the long run.

Calm down OP, no one is picking on you, you have to meet the gate keepers, don't you? Some SEEM grumpy, they are all a pretty good bunch of folks.. :-)

Remember this if nothing else.

To whom should a gift that is being returned, be returned too?

The giver of course.

You DON'T have to receive or accept anyone's insults (or gifts as I call them) if you don't want to.. I THINK the lead pipe would hit the bottom first, BUT that is just me being the class clown..

Welcome OP.. Enjoy.. ASK away...

Regards

A watt is a watt. This is what in logic is called a tautology, a statement that is always true and therefore says nothing. A watt is a watt is the kind of thing that impresses the non-thinking type susceptible to irrational emotional stories.

Besides, it takes like about three seconds to realize what total BS it is. We all know plenty of examples of solid state amps that measure the same watts but yet one sounds more powerful. We also know the same for tube amps. If not all tube watts sound the same, and not all solid state watts sound the same, then what reason do we have to think all tube watts sound the same as all solid state watts? None.

This is what we like to call an airtight argument. No two ways around it. Tube watts and solid state watts are not created equal. The only question now is which tends to sound more powerful than the other? Tubes. Hands down. Not even close.

Another clue this is true, solid state people are always trying to explain away the fact tubes seem more powerful. They come up with all kinds of fancy theories. Being illogical, they do not even notice this is all very much beside the point. Nobody ever said tube watts measure greater. That would be absurd. What we say is they give the distinct impression of being more powerful. No amount of "explaining away" will ever change that.

Yet they keep on, like the Energizer Bunny, equally irrational, they keep going, and going....

two things really… Distortion amount and order AND output transformers….

Not a logic problem at all.

Here is an interesting read!
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/could-an-old-school-tube-amp-make-the-music-you-love-sound...

Heavy is astute enough to understand, first hand….

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/7106#&gid=1&pid=9

Tubes distort on odd order harmonics if I recall. Whereas SS distorts on even order which is less desirable to the ears. Thus, some believe the tubes sound better

You're on the right track, but reversed it.  Even order harmonics are natural, and tend to be more tolerable, which is why many prefer tubes.  

Not true because amplifiers do not put out power to the speakers -- speakers consume power.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well for the sake of understanding, ay. I mean do you think an Air conditioner, cools the room, or removes the heat? :-)

Regards

This is what we like to call an airtight argument. No two ways around it. Tube watts and solid state watts are not created equal. The only question now is which tends to sound more powerful than the other? Tubes. Hands down. Not even close.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It has to do with the harmonics and what our ears/brain perceives as pleasant but in fact it is distortion. We hear it as total volume with odd order harmonics where many SS amps are voiced and leave even harmonics in. BRASH, bright, hard all the things feed back, controlled distortion and odd harmonics cure..

Pass is pretty close Watt for Watt in that sense.. Volume for watts burned.. pretty close..

What that WATT sounded like, when it was used, that's a different story.

THEN not all watts are created equal, ay?

Regards

All I can say is what I’ve experienced. I have 95 db sensitive open baffle speakers from Spatial. I’ve run about five amps from six watts a channel tube up to 700 watts a channel solid state mono blocks. Of everything I tried, 20 watts of transformerless tube has the best bass, best dimensionality, best imaging, best everything. More watts didn’t make for better sound, just more headroom I didn’t need. 

The tubes I’ve had sound way fuller at low volumes therefore sounding more fullfilling at low volumes. If you really want to rock out at 100db levels I think you need some watts and some current. I’ve not had high dollar tubes but that is my experience. If I liked 80db or under it would be tubes all day especially if it was not too busy music. 

Ohh the one I had that demanded tubes was Klipsch Chorus 2s. They rocked like a mutha but still needed some eq to tame them. The Tekton DIs I had sounded really very awesome with the Cayin A100 I had but only till about 80-85 db then they sounded a mess. 

I’ve now owned a few SS amps and a few tube amps…. Mind you, I now own a really hi-end tube pre-amp and power amp set and I’m loving the tube sound…

I compared the $35k Gryphon to the $20k ARC and my ear goes to the ARC amp every time… 

you listen and learn… no right answer…right boys…?

It isn't true that 20 watts are 20 watts. One may be 40 volts at 0.5 amp, the other 10 volts at 2 amps. But does it matter to the sound? And does the answer to that question depend on the speaker (setting aside cone versus electrostatic design)?

Comparison on my amps.
1. 80 Watts class A SS amp by Junsgon
2. 125 Watts class A SS amp by Plinius.
3. 150 Watts class D amp by ARC
2 > 1 > 3 in loudness.
I will get a 100 Watts tube amp in a month or so, so I will see how this amp compares with #1 and #2 in loudness.

A watt is a watt except when it's not. The interaction with a power source and a resistor is pretty predictable. A speaker is not a resistor. It is a complex impedance with resistive, capacitive, and inductive values that vary with frequency and level. Worse, a dynamic speaker is also an electrical generator creating significant back EMF that the amplifier has to deal with, both in terms of dissipation and fedding back into the feedback loop of the amp. If you doubt me, hook a voltmeter up to a woofer and press it back and forth. 

How various amps and amp designs deal with all this is the magic and the art part of amp design. And why different amps do indeed sound different, from each other, and on different speakers. Isolating a big high sensitivity speaker from the amp with a transformer, as most tube and McIntosh amps do gives the designer a known constant load to optimize the design to, and is why most successful Klipsch, big Altec, and JBL systems are tube based. They isolate the amp from the back EMF and complex impedances, but there's no free lunch there, either. Mismatch loads and the frequency response suffers. 

Watts are only one parameter, and an easy one to market, like Megapixels in Photography. I remember back in the 60s when solid state first got started. The marketing drive was how many transistors a radio had. The more the better so the more it sold.

My current 40 watt mono block tube amps drive the few speakers I own better than several solid state amps I had that had more than double that power. I'm not implying that tube watts are always better than solid state butin my current set up, it has proven to be. There are so many other factors  like current, power supply, that affect the ultimate outcome.

Finally, current tube gear performane, as shipped from the manufacturer, is likely constrained by currently available production tubes. It has to be that way as  amp manufacturers needs big quantities of tubes, Although the current tubes available are decent and better than 10 years ago, numerous older tubes have further significant positive impact on the sound.

Heavy i put the ball right above the net for a Mac autoformer spike….

excepting Ralph, Julius, the Joule dude and a few others, what we are mostly discussing ain’t tubes…but transformers…. The real great tube amp designers are rolling their own, so to speak…often by hand….

Carry on ….

All I can say is what I’ve experienced. I have 95 db sensitive open baffle speakers from Spatial. I’ve run about five amps from six watts a channel tube up to 700 watts a channel solid state mono blocks. Of everything I tried, 20 watts of transformerless tube has the best bass, best dimensionality, best imaging, best everything. More watts didn’t make for better sound, just more headroom I didn’t need.

Sshhh, you’ll wake the circular argument tautology ostriches. One of em might pull its head out, see its own shadow, get so startled it thinks its a hedgehog, go running for cover bang into a mono block pass out and wake up sputtering word salad. On second thought never mind, same difference.

I prefer solid state class A single ended, as in sugden. I leave the tubes to the ancillary sources, such as the phono preamp, and my tubed border patrol dac, tubed rectifier power supply to be more accurate. I think this is the way to go, as you get the best of both worlds and also more flexibility to change things out.

I am more in the camp of tube vs. solid state matters the most when it comes to the amp, not so much the sources or linestage.  While I prefer all-tube, I think that finding the right amp is the most important thing when matching electronics to one's chosen speaker.  If the speaker is reasonably efficient, and if one does not have an extremely large room and insist on playing at rock concert levels, I personally like tube amps.  In the somewhat extreme circumstance where more than 100 watts is really needed, I might consider solid state because I don't like high-powered tube amps.  For most applications, I think one can find a good pentode/tetrode pushpull or output transformerless tube amp, and with high efficiency, single-ended triode amps can be added to the list of candidates.

When it comes to the amount of power needed, I think more people err on the side of going for "more" when they should have been emphasizing "better."   

1. IMHO height-sensitive speakers or mid- sensitive speakers in small room are must.
Powerful amplifier with low sensitivity speakers is the wrong solution. Voice coil heating causes compression. More power you give  - more compression you get.
2. Height-sensitive speakers work best with low power simple schematic triode tube amplifiers SET or push-pull. This combination gives a real transparency, micro dynamics, musical details, tone naturalness, natural life like dynamics.

Triodes have much less distortion and amplification element vs any type of transistors.
Plus triodes have very low 3rd order harmonics vs transistors and pentodes.
To get low distortion in transistor amplifier a deep global feedback should be used. 
This feedback shifts distortions to higher orders. Out brain is super sensitive to height order of distortions. Sound become more harsh, macrodynamic is sufferings, instruments tone become flat and artificial.
Also transistors have thermal distortions that tubes don't have. This issue solution is class A.

@flasd Distortion at clipping is why this myth persists. Simply put, tubes can overload quite gracefully while transistors cannot. So you can have the musical waveform briefly overload a tube amp and you may not notice. But you will if that happens with solid state! In addition, 3dB isn't much of a difference to the ear, but to an amp its a doubling of power. For this reason a tube amp that overloads gracefully might appear to keep up with a solid state amp of twice the power.


One exception might be when you try to drive certain ESLs or other speakers that have a high impedance. Tubes quite often do not lose power into higher impedance, but all solid state amps will. For example to make a Sound Lab ESL play at a certain volume, you might need a 600 watt solid state amp to do the job in many rooms. Because the Sound Lab has a 30 Ohm impedance in the bass, that solid state amp might be only able to make about 150 Watts. But a 150 Watt tube amp might make 150 Watts into that same load- and so in that case its not myth; the tube power is more powerful.

personal experiences- an amplifier's output energy has more to do with the design and quality of an amplifier (and preamplifier) than its power rating, tube or solid state, all else being equal. 

I won't go into explaining why but can confirm that tube power has been more powerful in my experience.  I have had Audio Research 110 wpc mono blocks, 75 wpc and a 150 wpc amps, all tube.  Prior to this I had B&K 250 wpc, Parasound 225 wpc, 350wpc and 750 wpc.  The ARC amps all out performed my solid state examples.  If you went up the quality ladder in SS from my modest examples then less watts would have likely equated to more power.  

In the end, does it matter?

You simply have to try out different components and find what works in your system for your ears.

What that WATT sounded like, when it was used, that's a different story.

THEN not all watts are created equal, ay?

Steve Deckert of Decware uses the motto - "If the first watt sucks, why continue?

I have been a tube amp user for the last 4 years - specifically a flea watt amp. I love the sound, and the 2.3 wpc are BIG watts, in that, I very seldom need more volume for my listening level preferences. But, matching speakers must be pretty efficient - preferably above 94 dB sensitivity. There is so much detail and a lot of space around the instruments. It is very "involving" musically.

But...a short while back, I became interested in early 70’s SS amps, and decided to get one. I ended up finding a '71 Sansui integrated, that had been fully restored. Truth be told, I just loved it cosmetically (AU-222 black face, mini) and really got it more as a novelty than anything else.

Folks - I was ill-prepared for what happened when I hooked that puppy up! Like I stated above, my speakers are high efficiency (open baffles) and the Sansui (18 wpc - 8 ohm) just blew me away. Not only does it crank like the devil, but it sounds spectacular.

It is evident that the level of clarity is not on par with my tube amp, but, to me anyway, the sound can be more natural, and I find myself wanting to come back to it over the tubes more and more.

Anyway, I love both the tubes and the SS, and you really don’t have to choose one or the other - you can have both for a completely different sound. But when I listen to the Sansui, I think about John Peel, saying that a guy was trying to convince him that CD’s were better than vinyl because they had no surface noise. His answer was "listen mate, life has surface noise."

My point (I guess) is that sometimes, the more clarity you have, the less natural it is. After a few years of trying, I finally decided that I did not like high definition recordings (in general) because, what they gain in clarity, they lose in realness.

It's not 20 watts on a tube amp vs. on a SS amp. It's 20 watts on any amp vs any other amp. Watts per channel is measured under certain conditions which can be varied to get to the desired marketing result of a spec.

You need to listen to the amps you are comparing, ignore the specs, unless they tell you some situation where they won't work, like speaker sensitivity under 90dB. If you never turn it up, maybe you'll like tubes.

I’ve had some really good sounding SS amps over the years but I’ve had several tube amps and they all sounded great .  Some better than others but I haven’t switched back to SS because in addition to sounding excellent they were minimal fuss. My last SS was a Mc Cormack DNA 125 and it was a damn good amp but my 40 watt EL34 PP amps that replaced it sound way better.  Can’t play quite as loud but I really never crank it loud so it never mattered.    To me it’s not about the topology it is more about the synergy with any given speaker.    
It’s foolish to buy a tube amp if you  have low efficiency speakers    Some of my best set ups were high efficient speakers with moderately powered tube amps