I listen to a lot of stuff with information below 42Hz! I played string bass in junior high and past college. So I find that bass response is important to me to be convincing, and since I like a lot of electronia, I have speakers that go to 20Hz and electronics to match.
In tinkering with a lot of tube preamps over the last 40 years, I found that the big problem in getting tube preamps to play bass is the output coupling cap. You can make it bigger to get bass, but if you do so you can loose detail as the bigger caps are less musical. So I started tinkering with direct-coupled outputs on the preamp, inspired by an old Berning preamp called the TF-10 (which also had a direct-coupled output). It was a bit of a trick but I got it to work.
Not only do you get deeper bass with a direct-coupled output, you also get more mid and high frequency detail without fatigue- its sort of the best of both worlds.
So- tube preamps thus have the ability to better than the best transistors, IOW deep bass is not an inherent limitation with tubes; it has to do with the coupling caps.
In tinkering with a lot of tube preamps over the last 40 years, I found that the big problem in getting tube preamps to play bass is the output coupling cap. You can make it bigger to get bass, but if you do so you can loose detail as the bigger caps are less musical. So I started tinkering with direct-coupled outputs on the preamp, inspired by an old Berning preamp called the TF-10 (which also had a direct-coupled output). It was a bit of a trick but I got it to work.
Not only do you get deeper bass with a direct-coupled output, you also get more mid and high frequency detail without fatigue- its sort of the best of both worlds.
So- tube preamps thus have the ability to better than the best transistors, IOW deep bass is not an inherent limitation with tubes; it has to do with the coupling caps.