Leo,

Seriously, you should revisit some quality valve amps sometime and see what you think now. Oh, and by "quality" I don't necessarily mean expensive!

Nothing in hi-fi is perfect, and through recent experiments with high quality, well-designed, solid-state amps and respective examples from valves, I can clearly hear that ss amps have the edge on speed of bass transients and an overall quickness of response in the bass region which makes for a 'faster', tighter, slightly punchier sound - but with certain types of music only (mainly rock and dance). But a good valve amp is not lacking at all in this area; it's just that in my experience a good ss amp handles that particular aspect of the sound just that little bit better.

However, in every other area, to my ears, a good valve amp outperforms a good solid-state amp, and by a considerable margin, particularly when you hear a valve amp that gets it *so* right. There is a crystalline clarity, purity, openness and expansiveness with valves that I simply don’t think ss is capable of, no matter how well designed it is – for me, it’s to do with how fundamentally different both technologies behave when implemented in their respective circuits. But it's like anything else: ‘you pays your money and takes your choice’. I could easily see why people with certain tastes in music and presentational priorities wouldn't really 'get' the valve thing, and their choice is as valid as anyone else's.

As far as I'm concerned though, my taste in music is too wide and varied to build a system around what optimises only a small percentage of what I listen to, and then only in a way which isn't really that important to me. The valve amp I use handles the vast majority of my music collection far better than any ss amp I've heard, and that's all that really matters. YMMV

Marco.