I've had brief flings with SS but always settle on tubes. In fact at one point, though my Conrad Johnson amps have been generally very reliable, they blew a fuse or something. I got lazy about having them fixed and threw in a Harman Kardon solid state amp in to my system so I could keep listening to it. Over the months and the next year my listening dwindled rapidly to the point I was rarely sitting in front of my system to listen. I figured it was because I'd just lost fervent interest in high end audio and listening to music that way, so I thought it was time to start selling stuff. First up was selling my CJ amps.
But of course I had them fixed before I could sell them. Got them back from the shop, hooked them up to make sure they were working fine before putting them on the listings. And...BAM! there was that sound! That richness, organic, believable quality that just sucked me in. I spent much of the night listening to music. Then the next night. The next night. I found that my desire to listen to music through my system was back, big time. I realized I couldn't sell those amps and have been listening happily ever since.
I'm very sensitive to tone/timbral qualities in a system and if it isn't "there" for me I feel no desire to bother sitting to listen. So while the tube sound may be a subtle difference in the big picture, it's a subtle difference that turns out to be very subjectively important for me.
I have an audiophile pal who has gone back and fort between tubes and SS, usually for the "I like the tube sound but I'm sick of the hassles."He recently replaced his tube amps with a solid state amp and claims to be quite happy. Good for him, I say. What I don't tell him is my own reaction: I definitely find his system less enjoyable than before, with a slightly off-putting hardness/steeliness that wasn't there with his tube amps.