What is your experience when deciding between the two technologies? Or do you own amps of both types and use them for different things? Are they really different?
For me they very sound different, and since the first time I heard a tube headphone amp I was enchanted by its rawness. I had been driving my Abyss AB1266 Phi TC with a solid state amp (off-brand with Chinese components) and it sounded great but I had read these headphones really need a good amp so I went to a store to see what can drive them better, and tried a tube amp from Germany. 10 seconds in I was able to tell this is what I needed. Might be a matter of taste? Yes, but to each his own, I have read people who hate the Abyss and also others like me who love them.
I’d like to know your opinions too.
In the price range I move in, having a FiiO K5 pro and a Xduoo TA-26, I would say that tubes are more of a placebo and comfort thing than a drastic change in sound that’s actually there. Maybe there are implementations that measure much worse but sound interesting in return, but I haven’t heard those yet.
There could be better stuff out there, but I haven’t heard anything that does this “magic” everyone is talking about. You just hear that high impedance + tubes is great, but no one can explain why, except for telling you that you will have a tad more bass.
But I’ll stick to high impedance headphones in the future, if possible. That way I can try anything new on both solid stats and OTL amps.