Matt, not to start a discussion which could wake this place up, but my experience with tube amps is that they produce excellent sound quality. If you audition a good tube amp, or even a modest tube amp like Monoprice's $150 effort, you might agree that the difference is not "distortion." To my ears, tubes sound more "you are there," more like real life. It may be that the tube sound does not add "sweetness" as much as solid state amps miss it.
If you put on an Oscilloscope and capture what is going in vs what is coming out, there is a difference beyond just amplification.
Distortion (Electronics).
to reproduce or amplify (a signal) inaccurately by changing the frequencies or unequally changing the delay or amplitude of the components of the output wave.This is not saying it is a bad thing, but non the less what is coming out of the amp is not exactly what was recorded. Some will say that many of the axiom speakers they feel distort the sound that they are use to hearing compared to other speakers. And my point giving was that many of the electric guitar players use a tube amp to get that overdriven distortion sound that is what they are looking for.
I have not had the privilege to sit down and listen critically to a tube amp or tube pre/SS-amp setup. If I had more money it would be something that I would surely do. I think of it as something like peoples preference between digital recordings and analog vinyl or real to real tape.
