Forget the sharp ones! I want to use dull! I plan to work off some of that anger. You know what I mean?
As far as the vacuum tube amplifiers they do have a somewhat different sound quality to them. The typical solid state amplifier directly drives the speaker with the output stage and can transfer hard clipping distortion directly to it.
A tube amplifier has that impeadance matching transformer that greatly smoothes out clipping effects. Plus tubes do have that unique feature that they can both produce and be afected by physical vibration of their own internal structure.
Those odd interactions do tend to give a smoother and warmer sound to the music in some situations. That warmth and smoothness comes from some rather complex interactions related to the variable nature of a vacuum tubes actual design. Natural harmonics at different frequencies, non linear gain charictaristics, variabl e slew rates from one tube to the next, and many other factors that are not part of a solid state devices operating nature.
I have played with vacuum tube amplifiers for mostof my life and they have unique sound qualities all to them selves.
But I agree the magazine nutters tend to get too far off from the physics of how and why they sound different.