Do tube amps sound very different to solid state amps and why?

Answer 1

A famous hi-fi audio designer invited some "golden ears" to do some blind A/B testing with a solid state amp he had designed and some famous "musical" tube amplifiers;
with a screwdriver he altered his amp to mimic the famous and costly amps, the "golden ears" were unable to identify when the solid state amp was engaged.

Nevertheless,

Tube amplification for hi-fi and guitar amplification has many supporters and there is a difference. There are reproducible variances in the auditory chain that some listeners find more pleasing and some characteristics of tube guitar amplification that some players prefer.

Let your budget be your guide, a well designed ss amp will sound good, as will a (presently) more expensive tube amplifier.

There is an argument about sound being a never ending wave that pleases; while digitizing creates stairstep auditory spikes that our ears respond to with fatigue. The evidence may be anecdotal, but we are more sensitive than most instruments.

The primary difference between Tube and digital amplifiers used today is the Harmonics (The richness of the sound).

Tubes are ANALOG devices and they do not deal with just one byte at a time like DIGITAL does. They can handle - simultaneously - an unlimited number of frequencies at the same time (all at different volumes) and the interactions of those frequencies that generate even more sound (Harmonics - which are NOT generated in a digital chip - it has to be programmed in), while digital can only reproduce ONE piece of information at any time. And that is the volume (how fast that changes SIMULATES the frequency).

Digital is fast and they can REPRODUCE sounds that are good - no question. It is our ears that hear this sound and they are different from one person to the next. But by using test instruments the actual waveforms coming out of a Tube fed amp and those from a digital amp are quite different. (imagine waves on a beach being flat topped - blocks coming in o the beach - instead of complex and beautiful curved waves of water.)

So our ears may not able to distinguish one from another, in reality there is a big difference (and some people have ears good enough to hear this difference). This is not to say that digital is bad, the difference to our ears is not much. besides we don't all have screwdrivers and the knowledge on how to use them. LOL

PS: Even at the time in was argued that in the above example (which caused quite a stir for a long time) was with a professional home built - Solid State amplifier (using transistors and not digital chips like today) and that it had to be tuned by hand. It is a safe bet that mass produced - make it as quick & inexpensive as possible - amplifiers (even of that day) did not have the quality of the amplifier in the famous test.