Are Preamplifier’s Relevant Today or just a Hinderance with Digital Playback ?

One must always be careful to not construe personal anecdote as absolute
That's fair, for me, increasing the SNR by simplifying my system has made the blacks, blacker, which has(in my opinion) increased spatial cues and placed musical instruments more precisely in space and hence has provided me with a greater sense of realism which has made my limited listening sessions more enjoyable. Full disclosure, i do have another system which uses tube mono-blocs and a dac/pre which i also enjoy, I simply feel that my current main rig sounds better without a pre-amp and that they generally hamper detail and resolution.
I do like the way in which the forum members on this thread have conducted themselves, good honest discussions are a health thing and frankly this sport could use more of it,

Enjoy your tunes,

Don

@brewmasterdon

I simply feel that my current main rig sounds better without a pre-amp and that they generally hamper detail and resolution

That is all that matters

I do like the way in which the forum members on this thread have conducted themselves, good honest discussions are a health thing and frankly this sport could use more of it,

Agreed, for a moment I thought you will follow the standard lashing out of others ... glad you didn't, as I said about Charles, you have my utter respect

Now on the colorations, the only reference I get is live events, when I used to attend more than 1 year ago live events, tonality and sound of instruments were my reference, so that is what I use on a daily basis to reference "neutral", but then you have the recordings, which are usually made in the studio, live events on churches and cathedrals have the "room" added into the equation. Studio aside from the mastering engineer don't.This is the part I still don't quite get, not directly related to this discussion but indirectly.
How would you know (and Ralph is the ideal person to answer this as he is kind of a hands on mastering / recording engineer PLUS musician too, real renaissance man) what colorations are when listening to your system.

The life event reference could be actually divergent from this.

You don't know what the "colorations" are. You're getting into what Floyd Toole called the circle of confusion. Take the mic, room, equipment,  speakers etc.. used to record and these Recordings are as different as night and day from each other and whatever you're using to playback with. There's no way to recreate the thousands of different combinations to get what the final mixers heard. It's a waste of time trying to tune your system to a live event or certain recordings the best you can do IMO is reproduce what's on the media as neutral as possible, use as transparent gear as you can possibly get. That's simply what I do. There is no right or wrong way,  take whatever approach gives you the sound you enjoy with what you can afford. 

Thanks for answering my inquiry, I agree but I just see a conflicting statement for me.
If it is a circle of confusion how do I know I am reproducing the media "as neutral as possible"? it looks like a chicken and egg riddle