tube watts vs solid state watts

I am not so concerned with the location of the volume knob or which amp gives more volume on a given setting. That of coarse is dependent on the gain of the amp and the matching between the two components.

I have experienced over and over that tubes amps just simply play louder per watt of rating. I am not a tech guy but know what I have experienced playing with perhaps 15-20 SS and tube amps in my home.

One other thing I have noticed. I love both SS and tube amps and will always have one of each on hand. My ears find that SS amps fire the sound out of the speakers more than tube amps. They attack the listening position more. Tube amps seem to float the sound out of the speakers more. Again, this is something I have found to be generally true. The one exception was my Mac MC402 amp which did not fire out the sound like most SS amps but floated it out. Just like the reviewer said " it was the best tube amp I have ever heard".

It seems to me that there are low, or lower, watt tube amps paired with speakers that one generally would never dream of doing with the same watt ss amp.

Watts is watts! But since you can drive most tube amps well past clipping (into serious distortion) without hurting your speakers, many tube users routinely clip their amps to high distortion levels to get a little extra volume.

If you do that with a solid-state amp, the odd-order harmonic distortion will grate on your ears, and you'll likely burn out your speaker's tweeters. This is why solid-state users prefer to use amps with more than enough power to get the job done, while tube users take advantage of the tube's soft clipping nature and many times use an amp that is way underpowered to drive their speakers. I guess they don't mind/notice the compression, and they welcome the extra fuzziness of the distortion.

And I don't know of any tube amps that have 3 to 6dB of headroom. Actually, not too many amps of any type have that much headroom.

My tube amp goes to "11"!!!

Marco

marco,i shudder to think what the 11" reference is about.