Reply to Hardware Tube Compressors/Limiters

So I have become obsessed with the sound characteristics achievable from a compressor/limiter with a tube. That rich, warm, juicy sound is like hearing music again for the first time. I messed around with routing Traktor in to some VST plugins that emulate it but ran in to latency and eventual distortion over time issues.
I have turned to finding a good piece of hardware that will do this the right way, but hopefully at an affordable price. I am new to the whole realm of mastering but have done some research and came across this unit: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MDX2600/
It appears to be a good all in one unit and has "tube emulation", which obviously isn't the real thing, but I understand that true tube's can cost quite a bit so this is a sacrifice.
I just wanted to get a few opinions if any one has used this, or found any other compressor/limiters out there that will give me that warm sound at a reasonable price. Also, I have also been reading about sonic maximizers as well, that seem to provide a lot of the same characteristics as a tube might, what are advantages of this versus tube?
Thanks for the read, and have a nice day.