OP,
Thanks.
To understand the dichotomy in tube versus solid state one must start forty or more years ago. Back then virtually all solid state was lean, trebly, and hard sounding. Tube equipment was warm and rolled off the treble and was wooly in the bass. The tube stuff was like a warm fire, comfortable and romantic.
Over the ensuing decades each group slowly converged. Tube equipment got more detailed with better impact and solid state got better fleshed out. Particularly in the 1990’s and early 2000’s there was huge progress. In fact one of the real leaders Pass split his offering into two lines: the xSeries with massive power and detail and the XA Series that was lower power... .both solid state. Audio Research approached it from the tube side... although they introduced some solid state stuff... they backed off and their high end offerings are tube equipment.
So, in todays world budget stuff tends to follow the old characterization to some extent, but not always. Rouge has one tube unit commonly criticize as being too trebly. At the high end, the differences are less obvious as they have approached each other to sound very similar.
I feel the high end tube equipment has the edge and captures more of the emotional connection while all the detail of high end solid state. I have notice there are lots of old codgers like me that over time have migrated to all tube equipment suggesting to me that really well constructed tube equipment has the edge in capturing both.
I migrated to all Audio Research Reference equipment over my 50 years of pursuing high end audio.To me it demonstrates a level of performance not achievable with equivalent solid state. But it still depends on your values.
So, the generalization of "romantic" tube remains and solid state analytical, lean with better slam remain.
