It’s of course a very personal experience: sound. There’s no right or wrong choosing between valve or solid state amplifiers.
If you want the most clean, analytical version of a sound, sure solid state amps provide that. Keeping in mind that they also have a specific characteristic. For instance my Marantz is known to play “warm”. So if you often listen to jazz; smooth vocals, etc. these will together as a whole. Not to say that it can’t play rock, pop, etc. but it will certainly have a smoothing and warming effect on the sound.
You can disable this (partially) by setting it to direct mode, disabling large portions of the digital filters, to get the most true representation of the audio.
There’s a big but… There’s something “noble” about wanting to have the most realistic representation of a recording, but does it also sounds the best that way?
Valve amps on the other hand are known to distort the music in a good way. They’re known for making the music more musical. Another big take is that the higher the volume, the more distortion you introduce but in contrast with solid states, the distorted sound is more musical.
So as often, with many things like music, photography, mechanical keyboards, … it all comes down to preference.
I think my audio setup works great, is smooth, warm, etc. (living room setting, solid state device, used for music and movies) but I also like the sound of a valve amp for headphone use. I think it’s part aesthetic. There’s cool in watching the valves, wondering how it works. It sounds differentl, but I wouldn’t put one above the other.
