On-board sound? Now we're talking!

[Blomberg]

Perhaps it isn't very useful...

Oh man, you're lucky this isn't a musicians forum. You'd get flamed to hell for that remark  :-D

Tubes are creme de la creme in the music world.
A good, expensive guitar amplifier has tubes, I'm about to buy a microphone preamp with tubes ... I could go on but instead I'll put it simple:
Tubes=good, expensive - solid state=bad, cheap

I'd definitely go for a Tube sound card if they were available in 24 bit/96kHz (i don't know much about them yet, maybe they are).

Tubes give an amplifier a warmer/more life-like sound and in recent years (with everything being retro) they have become far more popular than their solid state counterparts.

Even some computermusicians insist on running their music out of the computer - through some form of tubed device (mixer/amp/whatever) - and then back into the computer instead of just exporting the audio directly to cd/wav/aiff/mp3/whatever.
And someone told me about an effect plugin (for audio apps) that simulates the sound of tubes (don't ask me how!), but I have been unable to dig that one up myself.

Btw., here is a topic on the topic  :-D

[Blomberg]

you could get the same effect from tailored EQ.

NO WAY!!

You can never get a solid state amplifier to sound like tubes with equalizing alone, solid state doesn't give you the depth of the tube sound, you would need to use some effects as well (hard to tell which, the tube sound is just ... different)
I once borrowed an early 90's Marshall amp (solid state) from a friend of mine (I don't own a decent guitar amp) for a track I was doing, but I could never get near the sound I wanted, so I ended up plugging the guitar straight into the sound card and used ReValver (effect plugin) instead.

Equalizing does go a long way, yes, but not all the way :-D

As for combined solid state/tube amps well, some of them are ok, and it's probably what I end up having, but an OOOLD tube amp is the way to go (I acted too slow on a cheap old Orange top once - AARGH!!).

This could be a completely seperate thread..  

Yes probably, it's a matter of faith, really  :-D