Why are older tubes so much sought after

My own personal feeling is that musical preference has little to do with what tubes (or, loudspeakers, amplifiers, CD players, etc.) I prefer. The best tubes, loudspeakers, amps, or whatever do best with all of the many genres of music I listen to.

I will say that personal preference does play a role. For example, many people feel Sylvania 6SN7 to be among the best of the bunch, as there is a clarity and openness there. But, for a lot of applications, I prefer the honkin' fat mid/upper bass that the RCA variants lend. Likewise, the Telefunken 12AX7 is consideres the gold standard, but I find Sylvania Triple Mica 5751 to be so much more open and beautiful, these tubes just seem to make everything bigger, and everything gets better with no tradeoffs whatsoever. Again, that holds true whether I'm listening to hard rock, classic jazz, or dusty 1950s female vocals.

So I guess that the one thing that everyone agrees about is that tubes "color" (alter) the sound: opinions vary regarding the best color.

But I thought the objective is to reproduce sound with "High Fidelity", which means without alteration. There really is nothing wrong with altering the sound if that's what you like, but such a system should be regarded as a musical instrument rather than a reproducing instrument.
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Hi Trelja,

I would agree with sirspeedy, you need to find the right balance for a specific set up. But I think this takes a great deal of experience, time and cash.

I listen to a wide range of musical styles. From classical orchestral music and small scale instrumental music though to rock and electronic music. This is the main reason I dont go for old tubes and except in a few critical areas dont use them at all now.

My main use for tubes are in mic preamps and vintage mics these days where I am looking for color. My hifi is tuned to be neutral.

I have never found any tube to work well in a full range system although wonderful in bandwidth limited set ups like Quads etc or for a specific type of music normally acoustic small scale with or without voice.

Eldartford,

my point exactly.

hi eldartford:

you made a very insightful staemnet when you referred to stereo systems as "musical" rather than "reproducing" instruments.

in fact, all components are imperfect. thus at best, all stereo systems are imperfect reproducing instruments.

doesn't it make sense to select the nature of imperfection rather than settle for whatever accrues from configuring a stereo system in an attempt to create accuracy ?

obviously tube selection may be a way to voice a stereo system to suit one's taste.