Tube Power vs Solid State Power

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.

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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.