Woodman, first of all excuse me for not being aware of how to set off each of your quotations (those I'll be referring to) in order to make my response easier to follow. I'll be happy to clarify if necessary.

You stated that you listen to music from a system that does a "reasonable" job of recreating the music. Solid state, IMHO, does that reasonable job. But after several years of listening to music through SS, I decided I preferred something that did the job much better than just reasonably. I upgraded to tubes and have never looked (or listened!) back.

A given tube not being able to perform its assignment might well have been normal back when you were working with tubes. Now such a thing is called an amp "design flaw". Only very rarely have I encountered tubed amps that used tubes not up to the task and in a few of those situations, the problem was fixed by using a different set of tubes. Certainly there are tubed amps that are unsuitable for certain speakers due to limited power or impedance issues or what have you. But when you find the proper amp to drive your speakers, you will no longer use the term "reasonable" in describing the music reproduction you're hearing, assuming your ancillary gear is well mated and performing optimally. My only complaint about tubed gear is that it tends to be expensive in many cases. On the other hand, there are many expensive solid state amps as well.