[mbenjaminsmith]

> You can get the correct vacuum tube-like amplification from a computer today, it's just that tubes are still cheaper.

It is absolutely not the case that tube amplifiers are still sold because they're cheaper than solid state amplifiers + DSP. Their sounds is preferred and they are much, much more expensive to produce.

The valves (which don't enjoy the economies of scale they once did) are only part of the cost. The power supply of a tube amp is usually more complex than a solid state amp and they generally need output transformers because of high output impedance -- transformers that are linear through the audible band are expensive to produce.

At scale you could easily build a SOTA DSP card suitable for emulating "tube sound" for less than the cost of a single channel output transformer. Line 6, among others, have built businesses based on that fact.