by 
nsxboy
ANSWERS: 7
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Listen to great recordings from the 70's and compare to today and you'll have your answer.
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More natural I suppose. Some singers prefer specific older microphones for their studio recordings over current state of the art microphones. Same thing can be said for amplifiers.
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The famed tube sound is due to harmonic distortions, esp. second harmonics. Tubes/Valves and output transformers are far from being ideal electronic components, so the total harmonic distortion (THD) is higher in vintage tube amps ("rich"/"warm" sound) as compared to modern semiconductor amps (more "sterile" sound). Peruse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_sound
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Digital amplifiers are too compact to emit the rich sound of a tubed amplifier. Digital tends to produce a tinny sound, which has to be corrected with an equalizer. Tubes are the best.
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The "tube" sound of a vacuum tube amplifier has to do with its high output impedance interacting with the complex impedance of the speaker that it is driving. In contrast, transistor-based amplifiers have a low output impedance that reacts with the speaker impedance differently. An excerpt from one of Bob Carver's (Bob Carver = arguably the most brilliant audio engineer of our time) 'White Papers'. http://www.sunfire.com/pdf/Sunfire_Amplifier_Whitepaper.pdf Search "current source" . . .
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Here's something to remember: "Warmer" doesn't necessarily mean "better." I am one who believes that today's solid-state amplifiers sound cleaner and more transparent than the old tube amplifiers, which in my opinion emoted a "cloudy" tone. It's the same thing with the old vinyl phonograph records. Many old-time audio purists prefer the "warmer" sound of LPs and 45s to the cleaner, more transparent sound of digital recordings, but that doesn't necessarily make vinyl analog records "better" than CDs and MP3s. It's all a matter of personal preference. Use your own ears and judge for yourself what you prefer, and don't let anyone else sway your opinion. Only you know what you like!
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Tube Vs Digital Working for over 25 years with amplifiers, I can explain it like this: Tube type amplifiers are made with output transformers, transformers have a limited frequency response most of the doesn't go beyond 20Khz. Real life sound has many harmonics which are frequencies that are double or four times the original frequency. Tube amplifiers do not reproduce harmonics for all the sounds above 10Khz. ( 20khz,40khz,80khz), just pure tones, which gives that warmer sound that many people love. Many will say that we can't hear frequencies above 20khz anyway, but using a digital amplifier most people do hear the difference between a 10khz sine wave and a 10khz square wave and the difference is just in the harmonics, but they can't tell using a tube amp.
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