Why do Tube Amps sound more romantic v SS amps

Tubes are way cool and  all glowey like candlelight. The more tube glow the more romantic.  They fascinated me as a kid and still do. 

All tube amps do not sound the same and vice versa with solid state! It all depends on the amp and the speakers that you are using with them!

Contrary to what Goeff Emerick thought at the dawn of solid state recording gear. Merely a Grammy winner.

OP,

Thanks.

To understand the dichotomy in tube versus solid state one must start forty or more years ago. Back then virtually all solid state was lean, trebly, and hard sounding. Tube equipment was warm and rolled off the treble and was wooly in the bass. The tube stuff was like a warm fire, comfortable and romantic.

Over the ensuing decades each group slowly converged. Tube equipment got more detailed with better impact and solid state got better fleshed out. Particularly in the 1990’s and early 2000’s there was huge progress. In fact one of the real leaders Pass split his offering into two lines: the xSeries with massive power and detail and the XA Series that was lower power... .both solid state. Audio Research approached it from the tube side... although they introduced some solid state stuff... they backed off and their high end offerings are tube equipment.

So, in todays world budget stuff tends to follow the old characterization to some extent, but not always. Rouge has one tube unit commonly criticize as being too trebly. At the high end, the differences are less obvious as they have approached each other to sound very similar.

I feel the high end tube equipment has the edge and captures more of the emotional connection while all the detail of high end solid state. I have notice there are lots of old codgers like me that over time have migrated to all tube equipment suggesting to me that really well constructed tube equipment has the edge in capturing both.

I migrated to all Audio Research Reference equipment over my 50 years of pursuing high end audio.To me it demonstrates a level of performance not achievable with equivalent solid state. But it still depends on your values.

So, the generalization of "romantic" tube remains and solid state analytical, lean with better slam remain.

Now good tube gear can have it all (almost) , wide flat frequency response that was not possible in the past.   I've had all , SS.  a mix of Tube and SS, and all tube.   Itend to prefer what tubes can do in my system with my speakers.  

Like others have said, its the way they distort and the fact they sof clip when you push them.  Poor matching of speaker to a  tube amp will not be so romantic....