Quote:This is the advantage of solid state, you don't change your electronic components every 5 years.
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If you mean output devices, it's true. They're soldered in. They only get replaced if you short the speaker wires together and blow one or more up. But yes, you are of course right. It as well as the consistency and lower costs are a big appeal and in most cases is the most cost effective solution.
But, just to play devil advocate... a little story.
Prior to going online and manufacturing tube amplifiers, Decware was a pro audio company that designed and installed sound systems for primarily night clubs. We would scratch build all the speakers and use off the shelf amplification. We did that and also re-coned loudspeakers and designed competition car audio systems. Thanks to solid state amplifiers this trio of businesses meant there was no shortage of blown speakers to fix.
The biggest problem in most of these clubs was amplification. We typically ran 400 watt RMS amplifiers into each driver to keep the headroom up and ran Imperial Folded Horns for subs. You could feel the bass in your chest when you drove by outside in your car.
But no matter how good you make it, they will try to clip it. Club owners, and DJ's are not a sound systems friends.
Anyway since they are played every day for 12 hours at near clipping levels and beyond, after about 6 months the amps would get tired. The bass hit would soften and the distortion would go up. The transistors were beaten to near death. We would install new amps and everything would sound great again. After a few years this got cumbersome and expensive.
To solve the problem we designed and built 60 watt class AB tube amplifiers using KT88 output tubes or 6550 and replaced all the solid state amplifiers in all of our systems. The 400 watt amplifiers were replaced with 60 watt tube amplifiers. The bass hit was so much deeper and the rest of the music sounded far more listenable, juicy and forgiving. And actually got louder. There were no more blown or worn out speakers, and every year we replaced the output tubes in each amplifier (instead of the entire amplifier) and everything sounded brand new again. It saved us many thousands of dollars as well as the club owners. That was in the early 1990s and apparently people still talk about those Decware systems today in our local club scene.
Just sayin...
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