Comment by earlz

Heh, I'd say tube amps are a bit more out there than everything else you listed (unless you mean tube headphone amps or something). It's INCREDIBLY difficult to accurately emulate tubes on normal computers in real-time due to their non-linear behavior. And there is at least some kind of science behind tubes "sounding better" since second-order harmonics are suppose to be more enjoyable for a listener, and are generated naturally by a single-ended tube amp design. I wouldn't say musicians using tube amps are trying to elicit memories of the past, rather that's just the best way they can make their instrument sound good