I think a great way to get that "tube" sound is to use tubes. Reviewers of amps and preamps use the "tube-like" description so often it's become a cliche', but I get it, and I use tubes. I am into hifi accuracy (!) although with recorded music you're at the mercy of the engineer's choice of mikes, mood swings, pan pot manipulation, and artist mollycoddling. When I bought my tube power amp a dude at the manufacturer's headquarters said they were going for a "modern" sound, meaning somehow less grease in the amp's output, which combined with a very clean preamp (note preamps for hifi should put out such a stress free low output signal to an amp that distortion of any kind from the preamp should be nearly undetectable) should be both less bad tubey, and more good tubey…so the question remains: Tubey or not tubey?
