Not an audiophile, never listened to sound from a tube amp, but I am strongly inclined to say you're wrong.

First, you can't say transistors sound better than ICs. The amplification elements in ICs are transistors!

You can argue that discrete circuits sound better than integrated circuits, and that's plausible. ICs suffer much higher leakage currents and interference within the circuit than discrete circuits. (It's worth noting that they also have advantages WRT external interference sources.) The worst case, of course, is the mixed IC with digital and analog components. That is a recipe for trouble.

As long as you avoid interference, and stay solidly in the linear range, any amplification technology will sound good. The differences mainly show up when, in a quest to get the most power out of the least amp, the amplifier is driven to slightly non-linear regions. If I remember correctly, tubes saturate much more gently than solid-state devices, which may well explain why they sound better. On the other hand, given a commitment to avoid the non-linear region entirely, solid-state devices can drive somewhat closer to the power rails. (As well as being cheaper and smaller.)