tubes or no tubes

I think Shadorne hit the nail on the head. Last weekend I listened to a friend's TRL 225 that just replaced his many-tubed Cary to drive a pair of Spendor monitors. The sound with the TRL is more open and transparent, and the imaging has improved; the Cary sound is perhaps a bit warmer. For my taste, the TRL 225 is a big improvement over the Cary.

db

right, and there are plenty of tubed amps (Berning ZH70 comes to mind), that when properly tubed, are as or more transparent than any SS amp, and some SS amps that are darker than most tubed amps, so no generalizations!

I'll take NO TUBES...
Actually I have a Tube Preamp now - An Audible Illusions M3A.
The one major complaint about tubes that I have is that every year or so my tubes get noisy.
When I change the tubes - I have a different sounding preamp.
Something is VERY Wrong with that.

If I had a CD player in my system, maybe some tube amplification would be necessary dull over the annoying CD sound that makes me want to take an ice pick to my ear drums.

Obviously I hate CD's.
I don't really hate tubes - I just hate the tube sound.
Not all tube equipment has the tube sound. VTL and Quicksilver for example.
I liked my M3A with one of the sets of tubes I had in it.
I just changed the tubes and I hate it again.

I'm going back to a solid state preamp.
If I miss the sound of tubes - I have plenty of DCC records to listen to.

Now I'll defend tubes in a different application.
I'm an electrical engineer in the Military Aerospace world where I need to design things that can survive and operate through a hostile nuclear event.
Tubes are DEFENITELY the way to go.
(Oddly enough - we USUALLY are not allowed to use tubes)
But That's why the Russians still use them. Trust me - they have plenty of transistors.
They keep advancing their tube technology for this reason.

The best sounding Audio tubes I have used are the Mil Spec (NOT commercial) Sovtek tubes. About 25% of them are great for audio.