I appreciate all of your responses. This afternoon I spent 2.5 hours in Audio Vision in SF, where the owner Antonio did a great job of demoing his equipment at my request. I listened to five different setups. The Audion Silver Integrated tube amp with Arcam CD player, and Reynoud Trente speakers gave me my first in store reaction of 'I want to walk out of here with this stuff'. My observation about the difference between ss & tube in this environment was that the ss had a depth of sound stage of about 1 foot, and the tube soundstage had a depth of about 4 feet. My perception of the music was more like it was coming from a stage, not off a wall. (Best description I can do). Anyway, the tubes had me involved in an excited way which was clearly different from the ss system.