TLS Guy,
Is that your opinion about the hype concerning tube amps or have you compared both side by side? I've got a response by e-mail stating that SS amps tend to be harsh on the high end and artificial sounding and that the JM Labs would benefit from a tube amp. I always thought that tubes also tend to be smoother.
I understand your thoughts concerning power, but I do have a SS amp with 200 watts which I intend on keeping for 5.1. I listen to 2 channel at moderate levels and rarely crank it up. So what you are also stating is that my JM Labs will require a lot more than a 40 watt integrated tube amp to run effective.
I grew up with tubes. I'm old enough to remember the invention of the transistor.
I have built tube amps and have tube amps in my possession, but I think it is getting time to sell them, as I haven't used them for some time.
Now I have to tell you there is no substitute for clean power. Now true, tubes clip with even harmonic distortion, so called soft clip. Many solid state amps have odd harmonic in their distortion spectrum. However clipping is unpleasant in all its forms, its a matter of degree. There is no substitute for NO clipping.
Now tube amps require outputting via a transformer, and that adds a number of aberrations, although on good designs slight. The amp needs to be accurately linked to the load. Tubes are a high impedance device, and are in essence voltage amplifiers.
Transistors have much higher current amplification possibilities. They are much more ideal devices for driving speakers than tubes. This is especially true of speakers with wide variations of impedance and ones that have large voltage and current phase angles. That tends to include a lot of speakers, most, and funnily enough especially the better ones.
Now tubes deteriorate over time and are only prime when new. Tube amps also have a habit of rolling off a little in the high end. (Very few tube amps can reproduce a square wave as well as the majority of solid state amps, which speaks to their limited bandwidth). Now it is this rolling off that gives rise to this legend of tube "magic." The problem is speakers, and far too many, (most) are hot on the top end.
This whole issue really frustrated Peter Walker founder of Quad. He would not introduce a solid state amp until he was certain that it was better than his famed Quad II tube amp. The 303 was the result, and they are a fine sounding amp. Most are still in service over forty years on. He was frustrated by the fact that people would pay huge sums of money for his old tube amps, when his first and subsequent solid state amps were demonstrably better. His current dumping amps are very stable. The 909 is still produced by Quad, now sadly manufactured in China. It is a really fine amp, and you won't find a tube amp that is its equal.
What you are reading about tube amps is largely superstition. I can tell you one thing, unless you have about $40,000 to throw around, a tube amp will drive your particular speakers worse.
