Tube sound with no tubes

I've had my supratek Syrah on 24/7 for 4 years or so, and I've had to replace one tube. (the power supply tube)

Not really a whole lot of maintainence...

Plinius have a tube-like sound.

01-18-08: Lak
Plinius have a tube-like sound.

Lak, what does tube-like sound mean to you? Would you please describe it?

You may come close to "tube sound" with some of the brands mentioned but you will not achieve the dimensionality and soundstaging of a good tube preamp. For that, well, you need tubes, not transistors.

Good modern tube preamp designs will have years of ZERO maintenance. The small signal tubes make very little heat and have a life expectancy of between 4000 and 10,000 hours.

Also, when it is time to replace the tubes, they are plug and play. If you can change a light bulb, you can replace the tubes in most preamps.

Finally, using tubes in a preamp or line stage has all of the sonic advantages and none of the disadvantages of tubes in a power amp which have to deal with a speaker load.