jw from Tampa - first post?
Welcome!
But be wary of Dejan - he can be very persuasive. 
I can be persuasive? I don't know ... I did sell a ton of snow to an eskimo the other day, but persuasive?
C'mon Jerry, JW lives in Florida, he's basking in the sun, watching the peaches on the beaches, and all I see through my window is dirty, big city grey snow.
Dejan, in a nutshell, for me, a solid state signature just sounds more electronic, which is a barrier that prevents me from connecting in some elusive organic way to the music.
I have only gotten this connection to the music from tubes. But I will admit that most tube amps I've listened to lack this quality as well. Maybe there are SS designs out there that can do this. God knows there are scores that I haven't tried (yet).
All agreed, Jerry, I think I know what you mean. For me too, looking for the emotion in the music, for the motive of the author to write the music, is everything. If I can't glimpse it at the very least, I'm wasting my time. Point is, we all have this or that we will not give up.
We are listening to an assortment of electronic components recreating a musical event that itself was recorded via more electronic components, and most commonly stored on a digitized medium. How we can still convince our senses that we are hearing the music as it was actually performed is a miracle because of so much electronics involved.
Let's not overdo it now, shall we? True, much electronics is involved, and true it can and usually does get in the way, but let me ask you this: the CD I sent you, Hevia, is a copy of a copy, yet did it strike you emotionally in any way? Did it move you in some small way, entice you to listen to it some more?
Of course it would have done even more so if you had an original, which would surely sound better, but still, it's the essence we are (or should be) after, the rest is just packaging.
Tubes just seem to have the ability to sound less electronic than transistors, I guess, and that is the difference I must be hearing (or feeling with my other senses). I think we experience listening with more than our ears. I think our other senses and body must be involved in how we hear something.
My wife is a good example of being able to easily differentiate the differences between tube and solid state, and I think she is doing so with more than her ears. I have never been able to get her to listen to music with me with an SS amp for more than 10 minutes before she gets up and leaves, even when I thought it was sounding good. When I ask her what's wrong, she is unable to describe exactly what she is experiencing, but it always comes down to the fact that it was not pleasant and she was not enjoying the music, even when listening to her favorite recordings. When she has listened with me when using a tube amp, which is not very often anyways, she sticks around much longer, sometimes for hours. Not one to get into long winded explanations, she just says she is enjoying the music. Maybe there is some sort of threshold for her where there is just enough reduction of electronic signature that allows her to connect to the music.
Your good wife merely underlines a simple fact - we all hear differently, each in his own way and with much more than our ears. That neither you nor I can explain exactly why shows how really little is known about psycho-acoustics, and unfortunately so.
And maybe that is the difference between those who prefer solid state and those who prefer tubes. Maybe there is a threshold of tolerance for electronic sound that is lower for tube lovers. It's hard to state this without making it sound like tube lovers have more refined hearing as if they were wine connoisseurs. I don't think it's that. It's like having a lower tolerance for pain, maybe. SS advocates maybe have a higher tolerance for pain that is caused somehow by a harmonic frequency range that is not necessarily audible.
I can certainly hear the areas where solid state seems to have the upper hand like dynamic drive, transient attack, better definition of low level detail. I appreciate these qualities, and yet I still can't warm up to SS. I wish I could, really. My preference for tubes is definitely not driven by any nostalgia or fashion, or a desire to drive up my electric bill or the temperature of my room, and I'm certainly not looking forward to the eventual need of replacing all the tubes in my amp.
Points taken, Jerry. Although I must say, there's really no need to explain, so I take the above as a search for the elusive explanation of what it is that moves us.
As you have surely realized, in many ways I am the opposite. To me, tubes sound mellow and can have refinement as few others, but they always fail me on rhythm, speed and attack. It's not that they don't have, it's simply that equivalent quality SS has it better and more.
Cheers,
DVV
