Ron, I'm a technician who is comfortable with a plethora of measuring instruments; I have discovered that they're useless when you get into the highest echelon of HEA. Although HEA is not cheap, the "highest echelon" does not mean megabuck components.
I am in the group of people who are driven by the desire to hear "the essence" of music in their listening room. Initially, I had SS. Since it had very high specifications, that appealed to me. One day it broke; that's when I decided to see what the fuss was about those ancient noisy tubes; after all, my SS was close to 0 distortion and noise, which the tubes could not match.
I was given a "loaner" CJ PV-10; it was noisy with bad tubes in one channel, but it reproduced music that could clearly be heard in spite of the noise and distortion.
Now there are tube components as quiet as SS; plus, they reproduce music as opposed to sounds.
I suppose everyone knows that motion pictures are no more than a series of still photographs. Eyes are different from ears; that fact has never bothered anyone, we still see the illusion of people in motion.
"Music", not sounds, but music, is much more complex. Music is about us, as living beings with an inner component that I call a "soul". Music resonates with that inner component, some musicians project that component; a rig that reproduces that component in a listening room is of the highest order; you wont be able to just walk in and get one off the shelf, you can't just throw money at it, and expect it to appear; you have to work for it.
Back to motion pictures as compared to audio; when audio is treated the same as motion pictures, we get the sound of music, but there is something missing; it's the emotional component I call "soul".