Mike- Thinking about my appreciation of what I get using tubes, I recall reading something years ago about how tubes roll dynamic gradations out on a curve but that solid state does it in rapid increments. Don't know if their is a lick of truth to that and I don't imagine this can be discerned with the ear alone but we don't just discern music with the ear alone, I'm pretty sure of that. Maybe it was son of tube Harvey Rosenburg who said that, I don't know. I've come to think that I listen with my whole body. I could be crazy but I don't fight it. Just one man's enthusiam talking.