Lovers of tube power amps, often talk about "tone", meaning the color of a voice or instrument, the personality; well, gainclone chip amps do this better than most solid state in my experience. And the Vinnie R. gainclone is uncanny in this regard. The Decware amp is a truly fine tube amp, having personally owned the SE84b & c and the SE34i. As far as a narrow band of the midrange is concerned the tube amps are more liquid, but not as detailed as the gainclones; and the bass, you know of tube amps, never seems to have the impact of solid state, but with the right speaker, like a Fostex back loaded horn speaker, a tube amp, because of its low damping factor, does make for a nice and weighty bass. But the Jordan JX92s driver does fine with a good solid state damped bass; thus I like my gainclones.Why don't I venture with the Clari-T? Well, I've given time (though only in days at a time) to a Griffin Powerwave and a Sonic Impact and they inhibited my emotional connection to the music; but I've turned my brother and a good friend onto the tripath amps and they listened for months regularly, that was until I started collecting gainclone chip amps: both went to a chip amp then, religating their tripath to a lesser place. Now I do appreciate the positive qualities of a lead acid battery. Having both a S. Nixon Tube DAC+ and an Ack! dAck! 1.3 , I find that the lead acid powered dAck! is better at handling orchestral crescendos. Many audio electronics do compress and homongenize the individual voices of an orchestral in full tilt and, undeniably, the powersupply has much, perhaps the most, to do with this. By the way I presently only have four gainclones (well technically five, since I've a Nixon kit which I made, though it never played music, just did a firecracker capacitor explosion, fun).
