I agree with your first point entirely, but there is precedent in industry for putting starved-plate tube stages in things just for marketing. A "great" compon

I agree with your first point entirely, but there is precedent in industry for putting starved-plate tube stages in things just for marketing. A "great" component in a shitty design can sound worse than a "shitty" component in a great design. I just have a feeling that the marketing push to "Just put a tube in it" will lead to more of these "token" tube applications because it's cheaper to run it at whatever voltage rail is already there than putting some hulking transformer just to run a 300V B+ rail for a single preamp stage. The headroom thing is all relative, I don't think your amp would be too happy if you fed it a 300V P-P signal from your 3kV Audiophile-Grade-Headroom pedalboard... I also can't wait for the 64-bit digital audio revolution. Nothing with less than 384dB of dynamic range is worth listening to! /s