Sorry to get weird. By the way, is that the same Rosenberg who called himself "Gizm", wrote for Postiive Feedback? If so, I rather share or shared his ideas (I think he died), especially when I got into tubes. I still have a print issue of PF in which he raves on in a long article which I quite frankly could not get through at the time and still keep meaning to get back to. But i have been of the subjectivist persuastion all along in this. I have of course heard that as you approach the pinacle of high end designs the difference between solid state and tubes begins to vanish. I don't have the money to explore this fully. Used to be you could go to show rooms and listen, een bring ths stuff home and try it out.
So, I do have financial limitations here, which is why I concentrate on synergy. You can get really fine sound without getting a second mortgage or knocking over banks by careful system matching. It took me years to get this through my head. You get all bedazzled by Stereophile reviews and start chasing after stuff that really won't sound good with what you have. At first I paid no attention to the "Associated Equipment" sidebars; and only gave a cursory look at the music these writers were audtioning their review samples with. I figured if their doing Jimi Hendrix, well, Mahler should be fine! Or worse, Diana Krall (everybody's system demo fave, certainly heard more of her in showrooms -- before they all closed -- than anywhere else!), assuming the same equipment would be Beethoven friendly.
Initially (I wonder when that was!) I began this adventure trying to get a satisfying summer rig that I could listen to without bleeding ears. It was in the course of a heat wave that I arrived at the current C/J-Rotel-Vandersteen synergy. I was beginning to just leave it all be at that because neither the C/J nor the Rotel (for all its muscle) both run cool. Then, you know, guys come in here with their sensitive speakers and the all tube system starts to come alive in ways I hadn't known were possible and I begin to sit there sweating and suffering until I can't any more and must try to deny the evidence of my senses, also trying to remember that the summer synergy is not forever; I could get such speakers myself, use both ss and tube amps at will, etc., etc. It goes on and on. So I go off searching for another pair of speakers, either to replace the Vandersteens entirely or ... and so on. The race is not finished!
So then I get all Zen and figure ... Oh, never mind! No, just to squeeze the thought into Haiku length, if not form, start all over again with naive ears.
