What do you see as the downside of tubes?


I have decided on getting a tube amp and it will be the integrated Mastersound 300B driving a pair of Living Voice Avatars, so at least that decision has been taken.

My main question is what you see as downsides of having a tube amp. As I've decided on getting an integrated tube it's really about what the downsides are I might want to know about beforehand.

The ones I'm aware are the following.

-The tubes need to be replaced and in the case of a 300B this will be somewhat costly.

-Bias is another issue but I'm not sure how big an issue. Do you plug in your meter every so often or just when you roll tubes or replace a dead one? The meter as such isn't gonna be a big issue as I don't think it's that expensive.

-Heat won't be a big issue as we have no kids nor a nosy dog that could get burned. Hope my electricity bill isn't gonna go through the roof, but then again, I can't quite imagine that.

I'd appreciate if you could add whatever your experiences are regarding this question are as I'd like to know more before I buy it.

Thanks
krauti
Jafox, from your comments and thorough review of Aria and Counterpoint, it would appear that these products owe their distinction primarily to tube power supplies. The flexibility of Aria in accommodating extensive rolling of tube families may also be a factor. Plitron and Dynamicap may be ruled out, as these are fairly common in high-end applications, and Dynamicap IMO is surpassed by several other types, particularly teflon. On the fourth hand, there is nothing like TX2575, which has proven superiority in disparate modded components in my system(e.g. BAT VK75SE, Merlin BBAM, Atma MP-1.)

On the point of rolling the Aria line section (particularly in view of poor results obtained with 6H30) I'm curious whether in addition to the switch between filament voltages, Aria obtains the optimal operating points across so many tube types. In phono section of my modded Atma MP-1, I've been back and forth between 12AT7, 12AV7, and ECC99. Each change requires fairly extensive R swaps for optimal operating point. Of these three tubes ECC99 sounds best-- which appears to have been an also-ran in Aria. So while I respect the versatility of tube rolling, I am cautious about pronoucing the superiority of any particular tube independent of circuit, and question whether a single preamp can do justice to so many tube types.

I'll add that the modded MP-1(which like Aria has the virtue of simplicity) includes replacement of 12AT7s with matched bipolar transistors in first gain stage of phono section(an Allen Wright idea planted in MP-1 by lewm.) This was a clear step up both sonically and in terms of gain. The latest factory iteration of MP-1 adds better CCS regulation to improve 12AT7 performance, so the question remains open from this experiment regarding relative superiority of tube and hybrid in phono. (My PH-2 rebuild will press the point further into FET. BTW, I also had a long run with BAT P10. The modded ARC PH-2 is the keeper.)

Perhaps the discussion boils down to tube vs. SS power supplies. On this point I can offer little other than to add that in my schema, the latest high-voltage silicon carbide zero recovery Schottky rectifiers improve significantly upon soft recovery discrete Hexfreds(or worse, 4-pin bridges) used in SS power supplies in most top gears. Some designers will argue that a tube power supply cannot equal the dynamics and energy of SS. Schottkys also raise the bar in terms of tube-like refinement. So the jury may be out on that one as well.
We ran tube-based regulation for years. I'm as a big a fan of tubes as anybody, but when we developed a proprietary regulator for high voltage, it was **immediately** so much better than the tube circuits that there was no going back.

There are a lot of factors in a regulated power supply! Essentially the regulators behave as a sort of power amplifier that you are listening to. They have to be very linear and wide bandwidth to really work right. The problem we ran into with the tube regulators is that bandwidth is a real problem. The result is right now that our regulators function with wide bandwidth and about 2 orders of magnitude less noise than is possible with tube regulators.

I'm not saying that tube regulation is all done in, but some innovation needs to occur before it can keep up with a **properly designed** solid state regulator.
I have two systems of good quality. One SS and one Tube (DAC, Pre, Amp). The SS is in the TV room with surround sound etc. The stereo tube system is in the living room.

Although I listen to music on the SS system I experience the music on my tube system.

100% of my friends will want to listen to music on the tube system over the SS system.

Never have any problems with the tube components and I keep a good supply of tubes to roll which I find enjoyable.
Krauti, I've lost track of this thread. After 4+ pages...how is your Mastersound/LV combo working out? Happy with the glowing glass?
It looks like the answer to the question this thread imposed is that besides the extra care that tubes demand it worths it, based on many of your responses.

There were some other issues here (not that relevant to audio reproduction from my perspective) such as heat disipation whih might be troublesome for some.

Nice and informing thread so far!