^^^^ THIS! ^^^^I often see the notion of inserting a tubed component into a system broached in terms of "adding" tube magic. I believe Ralph Karsten (Atma-Sphere) and other great tube electronics designers would make the argument that the "magic" of tubes is what they DON’T add to the sound of a system.
I use tubed electronics for the transparent, grain-free, dynamic, rhythmically-responsive, organic-timbre reproduction of the sound of voices and instruments the best of them provide, not for some tube coloration to be added to the sound of my system. Hi-fi electronics, tube and solid state, should "editorialize" as little as possible, not add a sound of their own to a recording or system. The objective is for them to have NO sound of their own. If tubes have a "magic" quality to them, it is in their ability to come closer to doing that than does solid state.
One of the great propaganda coups of all time is the way transistors that measure good but sound bad were flipped around and heralded as neutral while tubes that sound great are denigrated just because they measure bad. What a crock. As if euphonic, literally "sounds good", is actually bad. Crazy! Anyone with two ears can hear what bdp24 describes above. Well, anyone with two ears and no axe to grind. In other words, normal folk. Audiophiles, well let’s just say there’s a reason the word audiophool isn’t going anywhere any time soon.