Why don’t tube amps sound like tubes anymore?

At the beginning only two words define this hobby :High Fidelity .  Amplifiers overall are getting better SS or Tubes the good ones at least are getting closer to that simple goal: high fidelity .A good tube amp and A good tube solid state  should not sound different  when they are properly matched to adequate loudspeakers .  Speakers and amps worked together.The thing is we have been all misled with adjectives with no technical  meaning . In fact, when amplifiers get rid of their specifics distorsions they  should sound closer to each other. A good friend of mine actually a reviewer got foul many times when I made him enter my music room blindfolded  while he was always claiming that  he could make the difference right away between SS and Tube.  He kept failing the blind test.This was more than 15 years ago.  Nothing really new.  There  are numbers of amplifiers reviewers rave about because the metal work look good or because they can be used as welding machine  but not that great in  playing music .That why blind tests have been always discredited by the pundits .  Even the sweetest Beard monoblocs( 12E L84 per side  what a great amp by the way on  the Quad) were not enough to  make him guess right more than one in three.  Comparing new gear side by side in our own system ,changing one gear at a time would  clear ours minds from the refrain « BEST AMPLIFIER EVER MADE «   until next one comes for 10K more  and if it  is a tube it is likely an old design of the RCA manual revisited now.at 30k a Piece  With better cap  , better transformer or resistors very little engineering .

@mozart fan.
Well Paul, I have no experience with what you call a "JOR" integrated amp nor have I ever heard of such. I do have some with Jadis Electronics however. (Unless you are using JOR as an abbreviation for a Jadis amp? Jadis uses numbers to describe their integrateds however so I’m thrown)

Jadis, as a company, relied on a good bit of distortion to produce "beautiful music". They mostly run in class A. . One thing about Jadis if I recall correctly, is that its "source resistance" could run quite constant. Of course, much of this has to do with whatever loud speakers one is using. A Jadis, as a for instance or for any tube manufacture doing so, could never run with an ss amp to replicate tonal balance over a more complete spectrum even with similar resistive loads.

So why are most tubed amps cheaper to make? In other words with what I was trying to explain with my above blather, the "midranges" are where the magic occurs for most people and if doing that, the manufacture is saving a lot of money. Concentrate on that as an amp manufacturer, and you could sell a lot of amps.

I know of tube amps costing 150K. Price points for gear seem to go beyond materials used but in order to measure "neutral" throughout the audio spectrum, that cost money and might be actually cheaper to do with transistors. ARC comes to mind with much of their stuff in the 5 figure range even with tubes.
I am wondering if you have ever heard a single ended ss amp running in class A. As scattered a statement as what I’m about to type, single ended stuff just sounds "more correct" to me. Would be interested in what you hear in this regard.

Lou

@Mozart Fan. Oh, you were talking about the Jadis Orchestra Reference.
That’s after my time Paul so I cannot speak with any authority on this unit.
Manufacturers change their sonic signature from time to time. You now make me curious of what Jadis is offering these days.

I have heard sometime ago that the reason older tube amps sound so tubey is due to higher levels of distortion when compared to newer designs. Anyone care to agree or disagree?

I have heard sometime ago that the reason older tube amps sound so tubey is due to higher levels of distortion when compared to newer designs.

This is partially true. Its the 2nd and 3rd harmonics that are in question- together with a lack of higher ordered harmonics. Older amps tend to have a significant amount of the 5th thrown in; many newer amps do too. But some amps have less 2nd harmonic these days- if the amp is fully balanced and differential from input to output, the primary distortion component will be the 3rd due to a cubic non-linearity, whereas the 2nd results from a quadratic non-linearity. Amps based on the 3rd harmonic tend to have less distortion overall with higher orders falling off at a faster rate as the order of the harmonic increases. These types of amps simply were not in use back in the 50s and 60s.