Why don’t tube amps sound like tubes anymore?

Here is one reason for the sound...

Tubes always played through "transformers" before reaching the speakers. Its the transformer that could give that lush sound. For tubes can be lightning fast when not hindered at the outputs. We were hearing a transformer effect. Transformers have gotten better in quality. The problems with old solid state have been greatly worked out. If we could hear how the old solid state stuff sounded when compare it with solid state now? You would prefer the new solid state over the old SS, like one would have preferred tubes over the old SS. That lush tube sound is unnatural and is like listening to music being played through damping fluid. The kind of fluid used to make tone arms descend slowly. Some prefer the lazy tube sound. But its far from how fast real dynamic music sounds when heard live. IMHO

Oh what a bunch of utter hogwash.

What is tube sound exactly? I've built hundreds of tube amps from scratch and I couldn't tell you what "Tube sound" is. You can make tube amps that sound great or terrible. You can make them hard and brittle or lush and boring.

If you care to and know how, you can make them sound like music.

Make them sound like tubes though, how do you do that? Why would you want to? The idea long has been to make the bits and pieces between the start and end disappear so that the music can get through. 

Let's face it, most attempts at that, tube and transistor, fail miserably.
That's why there is so much turnover in equipment on this website.

It's not the bits and pieces. Really, it's not. It's what you do with them.

Remember in the 60's, the great analytic vs romantic debate?
Which one was right? This bad sound or that bad sound?

Oh, just forget that I brought it up..   

Aries Cerat is a modern brand that does still sound like real tubes.A haven't heard better in today's tube gear.

Consider building your own SET. The design is very simple and for a few hundred dollars you can have something with all parts as good as an you get in a factory made SET costing five figures. It is not as difficult as you might think.

My longtime audio buddy Thurston has "given up" on tubes several times.  Yet, here he is, using 300B monoblocks after trying three modern Nelson Pass designs.  He pushes the envelope (mods) on his gear and things fail, generally tubes.  I like the comment that the goal is the same, so understandably, hi-end will ultimately merge.  I find they have.  Up until the Covid, my favorite combo was Thurston's Pass XA30.8 fed by an Audio Matiere Paraphrase preamplifier into large, modded corner Tannoys...in a big open space, nearfield.  He's since upgraded speakers. 

I'm about to test the waters with a Roger Modjeski (RIP) Music Reference RM10 MKII tube amp being added here to my reference NAD M2 digital amp (dac/pre).  It will be my first tube amplifier in 50 years of audio.  In addition, a new pro-gear Focusrite Clarett 4Pre USB Audio Interface now enables me to direct bass duty to my self-powered subs and above 80hZ (or so) to my sealed Salk Veracitys, taking the lower bass duties off the power amps entirely.  The Clarett additionally allows DSP work with the bass.  The goal is to reduce Doppler Effects on the monitors and tune the bass.  So far, with the M2, things are progressing nicely.  Once mastered, onto the tube amp!!  Will report in some fashion down the road, I'm certain.  More Peace, Pin.