Andre- I think these are all shorthand labels to try to quickly describe the sound. A few others have noted that tube preamps in recent years sound far less "tubular" and that's a good thing in my estimation. I don't know what piece Fremer was referring to, but my suspicion is, he may have been underscoring that the piece did not have old school tube euphonics. My old line stage, a Lamm L2 was very fleshed out, rich in harmonics but was a solid state unit (with a massive tube power supply). So that's almost a case of a solid state unit sounding like tubes. When I sent it for service, I bought a used, highly regarded line stage to use as a stop gap for a month- I had forgotten what old school tubes sounded like- glorious, but the midrange was more of a 'blob' without all the nuances of the Lamm.
My current line stage is tube but doesn't sound like the Lamm at all, or the interim unit I used-very full bandwidth, prodigious taut bass, extremely good at articulating the details without sounding clinical. I guess in the parlance you are talking about, it is a tube preamp tending toward solid state in those respects, but it doesn't have the the fine-grained, white-ish sound I often associate (perhaps unfairly) with solid state electronics, or any bright, hyper analytical qualities. I think as much as tube gear has improved, so has the solid state stuff. But, they all sound different, and I think it is harder than ever to categorize the sound based on whether it is tube or solid state.
