Tube sound is not about warmth. It's about correct presentation.

Besides Carver's work, also read David Manly and how increasing the grid isolation resister can make a tube sound more solid state.  

I think Benchmark might disagree with SS "missing" something. :)

Now as far as that "metallic" sound, I did find this as one of my easy showroom "NOs" when auditioning amps. A great test is a good classical guitar recording and if the bass strings sound metallic.  Very clear on some Julian Bream.  A Vocal like Joan Baez can show it up.   My MOSFET passed. Modified Hafler and B&K passed. Atoll and Hegel integrated passed. So does my new Rekkr and Vidar.   I thought it was more Bi-polar vs MOSFET, but some bi-polars' sail through too.  Some failing costing well into the ego bragging range so none of that "not expensive enough stuff". A $150 Schiit passes.  Speakers have a bigger influence and for some reason, I have never heard a hard dome I liked.  By measurements, they should be better, but I keep going back to paper woofers and silk domes. 

Chasing "live" is pointless as you are dealing with the last link of the chain and the sources we have are no where near live. No one has ever succeeded in recording a piano half way believable I have found. ( if anyone knows one, let me know)  If not in the source, we are not going to reproduce it.  Pleasurable is a better goal. 

 The closest to "live" I have ever heard was a solo bass being bowed, 2 mics, right into a Revox half-track. Not even any Dolby.  Played back in the same room through some Levenson and first generation B&W 801's.   Close.   The best we can do is hope not to screw up what the recording,  mixing, and mastering engineers did to it.

I was about to try another tube amp. Last time I listened to some and then built a few, my MOSFET was better in all respects. Things progress though. My desk I could easily use a 6 to 10W amp and those are "reachable"   Jumping to 50 or so on my main stereo is out of my price point. Then I got the Rekkr on the desk and darn is it good. 

What each of think is pleasurable varies.  Sound is real, hearing is our brain deciding what we think. It is not objective no matter how fervently some seem to think it is.  It is personal and neither I nor you can tell anyone what they like. 

@mahgister + 1 - as soon as I see 'all' or 'no' in regards to some category of items like 'tube amps' or 'ss amps', I dunno - just doesn't make sense to me.  

I own a pair of Legacy Audio Focus XD speakers Ijust got in August 2023, they have an internal 750 WPC Icepower amp, you can run them fully internally amped or bi amped. I tried them both ways, first internally amped. Then I hooked up my VAC Renaissance 70/70 amp that is 30 years old. (Fully updated in Feb 2023) When i got the VAC on the top the soundstage was much wider, deeper and layered immediately. Midrange timbre and spatial information was more real. It is still a very good amp.

In my experience both can be stellar or lousy. Obviously it’s the whole system and room.
Given my youthful sixty seven years I recently invited in a few younger women (supervised with feet on the floor) to also listen when changing from a tube intergrated to a SS. We all picked the SS. The youger ears can hear more.
I had been using a tiptop KT 170 AMP. The SS amp has a bit more power.
Certinally this isn’t any sort of proof but what’s in the whole stew adds up to the final result. I wonder if fellow folks here take into account that their gear’s synergy, especially thier speakers coloring thier preferences. Every one tends to tout thier stuff untill they get other equipment. So there’s that too.

There is no "warm" tube sound. Tubes get warm or even hot and some dimwit reviewer probably used the term "warm" or "warmth" and it went from there. If you believe a sound can be warm or cold, you're like Ralph Wiggum when he said, "It tastes like burning."