Jolida JD-100A vs. Ah Njoe Tjoeb 4000

I've had the AH! for a month and am 20 hours into the process of breaking in the upsampler. The Njoe Tjoeb was brilliant before the upsampler and after 20 hours, I hear a distinct difference for the better. I love it! With respect to tube buffers/tube outputs, what are the real world differences in sound? I always read tube output is better. In fact, my friend told me to get the Jolida because "it has a tube output" even though he had never heard either player. It seems to me the big picture would be to just get the player with the better sound buffers/outputs be darned.

I agree with you Plinko: buy which ever one sounds better! It's hard to audition some of these units and I bought the Tjoeb unheard. Theoretically, the tubes have better harmonics (even vs odd?). But, its your ears that make the difference. Have fun!

Using vacuum tubes as buffers did not impress me at all. For instance, I prefer the Heart CDP or the Jolida CDP over Ah! or any decent CDPs followed by an external tube beffer stage (e.g. a Musical Fidelity X10v3). To me, opamp and tube combination reveal their weaknesses more, but not compensating each other well enough. With the tube buffer, IMHO, the sound gets more 3d volume but the texture is blurred, the image of sound is less focused, and the boundary of sound stage is not well defined. I own Jolida 100 and Sony CDP. There are certain CDs which are better on my Sony but overall I prefer my Jolida. With the Jolida JD100 you may want to try different tubes. My tatse ? I like GE JG5751 best, more than the very expensive Sylvanias.