Quote Originally Posted by RGA
Now to be fair this goes the other way as well. People can take a look at a tube and immediately draw a conclusion and hear what it is they expect to hear. That is expectation bias and it works both ways. And the word "better" is problematic. Most of the high end speaker manufacturers at CES are under the impression that tubes sound better since most of the rooms (and most of the best sounding ones) used tubes. The tube fan is not alone in this and considering by rights tube technology "should" be dead the only reason it survives in home audio is because of audiophiles who are people who generally have better ears and care more about sound reproduction - it is these people who kept it alive. Of course they also make $150,000+ solid state amps and ultra expensive CD players too so it's not like all Audiophiles are remotely in agreement.
The whole notion that "audiophiles" have better ears is hogwash. At the California Audio show, most of the people in attendance looked like they were over 50 years old. The high frequency loss at that age is pretty profound, so I don't think their ears are any better than anyone else. I also read the average age of stereophile subscribers was also over the age of 50.

Tubes and analog will always have their supporters, but that does not mean that tubes and analog is superior to SS and digital.

Your last statement is very true indeed.