"Interesting take on 'warm'. But, that does not explain why digital into tube amps produce 'warm'. Any thoughts on this?"
TUbe amps, with their soft clipping nature and unique impedance characteristics among other things also tend to have a "rounding" effect compared to SS, much like vinyl versus digital.
THat makes tubes an attractive ingredient to add into many audio soups to help take an edge off to various degrees when needed.
The physics (heavily mass and inertia related) involved with a cart stylus and tonearm tracking a record is a big reason why vinyl sounds the way it does (rounded/smoother) compared to digital, where playback occurs exclusively in teh electronic domain with no physics of mass, inertia, etc. involved to inherently damp things from the start.
TUbe amps, with their soft clipping nature and unique impedance characteristics among other things also tend to have a "rounding" effect compared to SS, much like vinyl versus digital.
THat makes tubes an attractive ingredient to add into many audio soups to help take an edge off to various degrees when needed.
The physics (heavily mass and inertia related) involved with a cart stylus and tonearm tracking a record is a big reason why vinyl sounds the way it does (rounded/smoother) compared to digital, where playback occurs exclusively in teh electronic domain with no physics of mass, inertia, etc. involved to inherently damp things from the start.