I’ve seen people state both that they so not influence the tuning as long as they deliver the same power and others stating that they can make headphones “sound warmer” or “brighter”. I don’t see how that would happen though and a lot of audiophiles just hear things that I feel aren’t there, like some noise difference between the Apple DAC Dongle and a 500 EUR DAC using an off the rack chip.
Take this comment from ASR:
Amps are more likely to make an audible difference than most DACs, but that certainly doesn’t mean there are audible differences between most amps
I’m talking purely about AMPs here, not a DAC combination.
There shouldn’t be any audible difference in timbre/tone between competently made solid state amps running within spec
Humans are very sensitive to small changes in volume but often mistakenly attribute this change to other nebulous sound qualities that they might be seeking such as “clarity” “dynamics” “punch” or negative ones such as “veiled” “muffled” “dull” etc.
When people “test” amps in store or at home, they always just use their ears to approximate a consistent listening volume and they will mostly get it wrong.
I have yet to see any compelling double-blind, volume-matched tests where people have been able to consistently distinguish between different models and tiers of competently made solid state amps. If the differences are so pronounced, then it should be trivial to conclusively prove this once and for all and end the debate (ditto cables, power conditioners, DACs etc)
I agree that when you introduce tubes into the mix, they indeed can audibly colour the sound and if you like that colour/distortion, then fair enough!
At the end of the day, amplifiers should *amplify* and not change the tone or dynamics of the signal it is being fed.