One thing to keep in mind about generalizing what tubes sound like: practically all music before the late 1980s was recorded, mixed, and mastered on at least one piece of tube gear. Before 1980, it was probably all tube. On the same stuff which was used to produce Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole. Listen to some good Sinatra recordings (you may have to look) or find an original master tape. If that sounds like distorted tube crap, I'll take distorted tube crap.

It's more a generalization about what the kinds of tube amps currently sold to 'audiophiles' sound like.  Except for a few amps like the BHSE nobody makes tube amps that go for being as linear as possible according to the standard metrics since it would just sound solid state and cost more.

@ Mav

I agree w/ pretty much w/ everything you've said.  I'll try to arrange something like that when I can, a bit busy.  I'm currently in week 3 of 4 into capacitor rolling atm.  Then I need to write something up for the CX985 and Portaphile 627.  Not to mention building my new Intel 820/2011 w/ 64GB RAM and setting up a new office.  I also need to pull a couple of engines (4AFE  and EJ25).  Then Craig is dropping off his new SS for us to sample to make sure it doesn't sound like shit.  Oh yeah, work too.    

I'd do it myself if I had access to all of the equipment but the only headphone I have two of is the KSC-75 and I'm not surrounded on all sides by people I know well with all the right kit either.

I don't think you have tins ears.  More likely music preference and phone selection if anything at all.  The HD800 is no joke.  Even my HE5, HP1000 and UERM can't keep up w/ it anymore for A/B duties.  Probably the best thing to do to avoid stupid, ridiculous expenditures is avoiding the HD800 and 009 altogether or at least avoiding meets and living w/ what you have.  If you want, I'll send you some tracks I use to see if you find them useful.  Just PM me.

You should join us on the Buffalo III build!

The last time I heard an HD800 at a meet I was a lot less impressed than I remember being previously.   I didn't have time to hear the SR009 or R10 that were there but overall I wasn't all that impressed with anything else as compared to my PFE232s.  The HD800, HE-6, and LCD-3 were the only things I heard that were on the same level in areas other than a larger soundstage.

I tend to rate IEMs higher than most other people though...

You should join us on the Buffalo III build!

I've already got too many expensive projects planned out.

EDIT: Fixed hyperlinks.
The reason so little research has been conducted, IMHO, requires a brief voyage into hi-fi history, with the help of Douglas Self's website.

The literature of a given period in audio provides a reasonable indicator of prevailing trends, so it's telling  that the audio magazines of this period had a much stronger bias towards engineering, Mr Self noting that "it was perfectly normal to read amplifier reviews in which measurements were dissected but no mention made of listening tests." "The Absolute Sound" had yet to be founded, and although Stereophile's first issue was in the early 60s its circulation was so small as to drive it heavily into debt, John Atkinson noting that "Throughout the 1970s, Stereophile issues appeared increasingly infrequently and the circulation declined until Gordon moved to New Mexico in 1978, at which point things almost ground to a halt..."

"HiFi News", founded in the 50s, was one of the few publications to adopt a vaguely subjective approach and still enjoy decent circulation. Even so, the tone is fundamentally different to the audio reviews of today. Take this 1969 turntable review: (http://www.lencoheaven.net/forum/index.php?topic=1190.0). The focus is overwhelmingly on the design of the product and its specifications, with nary a flowery piece of description to be seen. That even mild subjectivism was in its infancy can be seen in the inclusion of a section entitled "Subjective Sounds" in the "Audio" magazine issue of 1976 as a novelty - the writer even felt it was necessary to open his section with a justification of the approach! Anyhow, it would seem that things escalated, and by 1977 one columnist was laying into negative feedback, and another was pushing valve sound - the mainstream idea of complex amplifier sound signatures that were not amenable to measurements had well and truly arrived (The first discussion of cable sound followed in the magazine following in 1978). By the 1980s the high-end audio market had exploded, and the rest is history...

Various AES articles preoccupied with this period, and what immediately followed, make passing reference to the "Great Debate", including the aptly-named "The Great Debate: 10 Years On". Aside from corroborating the timings for the sudden and unexpected explosion of audio subjectivism, it also demonstrates the confusion with which those advocates of A/B/X responded when they found that their genuinely well-intentioned efforts to verify a huge array of supposedly audible things that had suddenly manifested themselves in the ears of mainstream audio reviewers in the late 70s was met with disdain: long-term (or even short-term) adoption of their test protocol was absolutely minimal. "10 Years of A/B/X Testing" repeats the pattern:  "It was thought by the author and his associates that general use of this system would resolve "The Great Debate" [2] of whether or not small differences in audio components were audible. The debate rages on, however."

As it transpired, it seemed that, especially in the long-term, very few people wanted to know, much to the bemusement of the AES paper authors, one of which went to great lengths to make an A/B/X box easily commercially available to anyone who wanted one for simple comparison. As far as I'm concerned, when the audio press as a whole completely failed to satisfy the burden of proof for an increasingly vast range of differences which nobody ever seemed to have noticed before, the burdens of proof started to pile up and have kept piling up ever since. Astoundingly, many turned (and still turn) to attacking blind testing or the A/B/X protocol itself.

From my perspective this is absolutely mystifying: they were off ered a simple way to verify their incredibly contentious claims, but instead attack the method of verification and then act as if those suggesting the method are the ones who really need it, and thus consider science duly vanquished. Even in recent years, John Atkinson notes in a comment to one of his Stereophile articles that the inability of any test to comprehensively disprove anything is a source of great frustration to the audio 'objectivists' - a throwaway comment revealing the bizarre inversion of the burden of proof which has been hanging over audio in a faintly Damoclean fashion, ever since subjectivism exploded into the mainstream.

Nobody is going to bother researching anything until the basic prima facies case for the existence of the phenomena to be investigated has been made. Three decades have passed with little sign of anything of the sort: I'm not holding out hope.

The Xonar STX is probably the best soundcard I've tried out of about a dozen over the years. I use the STX line out as a pre-amp for a pair of Be 718s run from a Roksan K2 amp. All headphone listening is done through the DA11 fed by the STX optical out. While the ASIO/KS software I use sometimes glitches, the card itself never falters. Its headphone out is also pretty good, especially on high-impedance phones.

On a casual test on my speakers I could not tell the difference between the volume-matched DA11 and the STX. The radical price differential has kept me away from more expensive DACs (2k+).

It's actually got a decent DAC / lineout. I didn't care for the built-in headamp though. That part seemed like an afterthought.

Are you implying that the built in amp sucks ?
I  need more information regarding that matter.
I  saw a review praising the "essence one" being enough good for "high end" headphone,
and essentially the difference with xonar stx is the amping part.