Need help understanding tube wpc

I like Sean,Rl,Viris comments and would ad that regardless of tube/ss when an amp is capable of X watts/ch RMS it is capable of a different number of watts for an instantanious peak. A better amp can do a peak perhaps 50-100% above the rated RMS power. This is based on a better power supply and design, etc. Music is peaks. Not steady. Then there are Class design differences too. There are a lot of factors involved. Good luck!

ET

watts is watts, which means if if you get more usable watts because of soft clipping then you got more watts!

Someone mentioned distortion, distortion can be percieved as being 10 times louder than it really is. Accepted practices of one percent distortion setting the standards for the amplifiers quoted power rating as Sean mentioned makes most 60 watt tube amplifiers like 20 watts.

But unfortunatley everyone missed the point and continues to miss the real reason tubes sound louder than solid state.

http://stereophile.com/solidpoweramps/806halcro/index4.html

See figure 9 on the link above.

Halcro DM88 Monoblock is playing at 100 watts and look at the complete lack of harmonic content with a 50hz input

Now compare.

http://stereophile.com/tubepoweramps/306yamamoto/index3.html

Yamamoto tube amplifier look at the harmonic by products which are ADDED to a simple 50hz signal, now these byproducts do not effect the voltage or WATTS, so in this case the tube 100 watts offer a great deal more sound than the SS watts.

The factor I just demonstrated with the comparison and the soft clipping has everything to do with tube watt sound like more than a solid state watt.

But depending on your speakers getting tubes may be a bad idea as speakers are not always compatible with two very different amplifiers. Many speakers are not designed well enough to have solid state run on them and the ones that are do not sound very good with tubes. So your speakers are going to determine which amplifier type is best for you.

Thanks for all of your input - getting a real education.
My speakers are Tylet Linbrook System 2 - 8ohm 89db are there certain tube design amps that would not work well with these. Have seen that Ty uses Jolida at times during shows?

Here is an article from Stereophile that delves a bit deeper into the subject and suggests that tube wattage and ss wattage are not the same; but we already knew that.

http://www.stereophile.com/reference/357/index.html

Czbbcl: ???
All that article seems to say is, what Sean mentioned above + that tubes are current "power" devices whereas SS are voltage devices. They act differently under load.

However the basic spec of "power" remains the same.

You, yourself as well as scores of others have known this for a long time now.
Cheers