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RE: It comes down to preference

I have had Bryston. Heard of them. Check their distortion and noise floor numbers. I have had Rotel preamp and power amps - low distortion numbers. Arcam. Low distortion numbers. Cambridge Audio - low distortion numbers. I have auditioned pretty much all of the top amplifiers that the solid-state world offers from Boulder, MBL, Edge, Constellation, Bricasti, McIntosh, Studio Electric, Anthem, PS Audio, Parasound, Luxman, Pureaudio, Plinius, Krell, Classe, Mark Levinson, ATC, CH Precision, Nagra, Sugden Masterclass, Electrocompaniet, Threshold, Pass Labs, YBA, Meridian, as well as the more affordable offerings from Yamaha, Marantz, Rega, Roksan, Quad, Hafler, Trends Audio, Wyred4Sound, Bel Canto the list goes on and on.

With tubes the list also goes on and on from Audio Note, Shindo, BAT, McIntosh, Sonic Frontiers, Schitt, Octave, Line Magnetic, Leben, Cayin, Shengya, Vincent, Cary, VTL, Ypsilon, VAC, Aeon, Luxman, KR, Audio Space, Einstein, Conrad Johnson, Antique Sound Lab, Jolida, Aesthetix, Border Patrol, Almarro, Rogue Audio, Spark Audio, Ming Da/Mei Xing, Opera Consonance, YS Audio, Air Tight, Triode Lab, ARC, and on it goes.

And because I live in a hotbed audio market I audition both SS and tubes frequently. Every day is an Audio Show in Hong Kong. Bigger and better than audio shows in the USA and Canada with more top-end gear here than over in the west where you have to save your pennies to make it to one or two shows a year - and most don't even muster the effort to do that. I can hop on a train any time and audition pretty much any name you list.

Since most people under the age of 50 like myself all grew up on Solid-State. All of us owned solid state that measured about as good as SS can measure. The supposed SOTA of which you speak.

But then they listen to some better amplifiers in the tube world and say gee Eva Cassidy's voice here is clearer there isn't that sibilant sound I was getting from SS amplifier X and it is pieced together more naturally - SETs are better than PP Tubes in this regard as well.

And for those of us with quality hearing left, have the ability to hear those issues. There is no "audible distortion" in the treble or the bass or a warble on vocalists with SET amplifiers. Granted if the speaker was not SET friendly that would be a very different result but then anyone buying a SET knows what speaker they need to use. Auditioning directly A/B with Bryston's top preamp and a 4B SST2 I kept wondering why everything had a washed-out and thin quality - album after album sounded the same. Flipping over to the SET - that was not the case - albums sounded substantially differentiated.



"Yeah, my $1500 VTV Purifi sounds better than my $5500 Pass X150.5"

I'll trust this 20s-year-old Classical music and Emmy award-winning engineer (Damian Quintard) over an old guy who can't hear treble.

Maybe learn something. There is a reason they don't use cheap junk.


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