The purpose of an amplifier is to take a weak signal from a source (cassette, CD, radio broadcast, phonograph) and make it loud enough for you to hear at a level comfortable to you. An amplifier ideally should give none of its own coloration to the sound--not add or detract from the source material, just make it stronger.

"Transistor" or "solid state" is not synonymous with "digital." The first transistor audio equipment debuted in the late Fifties, and it was all analog. Digital music (CDs) wasn't available until the early Eighties.

If digitized music is sampled and coded at a high rate, using quality studio equipment, its sound should be completely faithful to the original analog master. That's if...