Seems like fullrange speaker designers like SE amps and large scale speaker designers generally prefer PP tube amps. This includes 105db+ designs so it isn't just sensitivity. Ironically, many fullrangers are 95db and less.

Questions:

1. Which do you generally like better, SE tube amps or PP amps? Why?
2. If biamping, would you rather have solid state or PP tubes for the woofer? Why?

I have a very nice PP EL84 ultralinear amp using one half of a black plate Raytheon 5687 as a driver, with the other half as a current source for the 6922 phase inverter. The circuit is a winner, very clean, open, and dynamic, and uses zero negative feedback. I built it with loving care and the best of everything, including some very fine vintage Chicago Stancor iron, and it sounds fantastic (to me anyway!). But, I still prefer my DRD 2A3 SE amp.

The EL84 PP amp (and to my ear, PP in general) has better bass slam and weight, very good high end transparency and clarity, and owns the definition of "high speed." While it is MILES away from sounding flat and uninteresting, it still doesn't have that living, breathing quality of a good, directly heated single ended triode. IMO, nothing does. :) I love the flavor of those 2A3s!

Thermionic

SETs offer a kind of distortion that seems to mate well with the (very limited) abilities of a single driver, or a wide range driver set up. There is a simplicity & elegance here that actually measures terribly using all the conventional measures, yet manages to sound really appealing to many of us (including me).

Maybe SS manufacturers need to design amps that offer the same transfer functions & distortion properties as a full blown SET 45!
I'd definitely listen to them!

PP amps measure a lot better, and likely becuase of this, lose that SET magic. I think Amp engineers need to understand: humans LIKE distortion & weird transfer functions as offered by a SET (well at least some humans do!)

-akhilesh

That's IMO and YMMV,

George