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

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

Hi Luis,
It’s is perfectly logical to use live music listening experiences as a template . How can someone reasonably identify the sound of instruments as authentic if you have never heard it in a live setting? If for example you had never heard a baritone saxophone in person how could judge its sound when listening to a recording of one?

This doesn’t mean you expect your system to sound exactly like the live performance. But you could decide which audio components more closely mimics live instruments/vocals relative to competing components. Your ears would allow you to recognise or distinguish what you believe "sounds more real". Based on actual live exposure.

The listening and judging process will be subjective (By default).as people hearing the same live performance will interpret and describe the experience differently. @djones51 summed it up well, essentially choose which ever approach works best for you and leads to enjoyment listening to music. Agree 100%.
Charles

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