Audio advancement - why?

Jylee, you are correct. That was my original question. I also wonder sometimes that maybe SS is better than tubes currently - but maybe are we held back by our own "habits" of listening, such that anything other than tube seems "less" in our world!!
Semi went to the extent of size and Undertow mentioned the iPOD. When I mentioned advancement, I did not mean SIZE. Look at my evolving system - I am going from an integrated to a separate preamp and amp. I still cannot switch to iPOD or data-servers. Maybe they are as good as the current mediums I am using - but maybe I am biased to my current medium and that is preventing me from switching to digital files.
As for music as an art - I completely understand. In fact that is what I "try" convey to my non-audiophile friends. But remember if you can create art using more advance technologies, that can lead to betterment of art - why not explore it? Cave men used rocks, charcoal and other items to create art. Why did modern man come up with ink, paper and other stuff? Maybe SS audio has not been fully explored.
Atmasphere, I understand that humans did advance to Tubes. But looks like they are stuck there :-)

Milpai, true, we are stuck- for now. Believe it or not I would be the first to jump on the transistor bandwagon if I thought I could do it without sonic sacrifice!

If we listen to SS amps long enough humans will evolve to prefer odd harmonics :-)

"If we listen to SS amps long enough humans will evolve to prefer odd harmonics"

I must be evolving really fast since I don't like enhanced even harmonics already.

Kijanki, the difference between audible enhanced even and odd ordered is something like this: with the evens, we start to hear that they are there with about 0.5 to 1%. With the odds, we are well aware of them when they are about 0.0005% or so.

The evens can be canceled by fully differential balanced operation. Its not a great benefit to have the output of the amp be push-pull if you don't do it throughout because all the gain stages make distortion. So if you operate fully balanced throughout the circuit, the overall even-ordered harmonics will be very low or non-existant.

After that you do your best to not enhance the odd orders- zero feedback, class A operation, minimal gain stages, higher quality components, more linear amplification (triodes as opposed to pentodes for example) and so on.

This, BTW, is one of the very clear 'audio advancements' that has occurred in recent years. There are tube and solid state amplifiers that use these techniques today; thirty years ago they did not exist.