How do you add color?

Great dacs like the T+A 200. Sound very natural with better detail then tubes ,

different  interconnects too from the dac can influence the sound .

myself mod the Speakers Xovers which is a Huge weak spot in most speakers 

including ones over $30k. Most use average at best parts quality especially if under $15 k that's why most speaker companies don’t mention it for there is nothing 

to Brad about they don’t test 10 different type of capacitors ,just sound decent good enough l in my latest build I spent over$1600in parts ,average speaker$500 at most. Just take a a driver to see for yourself.  TonyGee of Humble homemade hifi capacitor test  is over 90% accurate with his ratings and Sonic character.

Two things stand out in this conversation...tubes can be removing information (where do they put it? In cheap capacitors?), and sequencers can add color. Sequencers? In my experience while living in the actual world it seems tubes can get more detail out of a signal which may seem like "color" although it could (if tubes are pushed or old) simply be pleasant distortion...and sequencers allow synthesized sounds to be repeated, which isn’t "color" unless you have a very short attention span and need things to be repeated...or you’re recording your magnum opus like Wendy Carlos...or you don’t know what a sequencer is.

....tweak the eq a tad, punch a detail up or down.....’razor werk’, adjust the sub....

The ’color’ should already be there, lacking a little ’nuance’...;)

Otherwise....why are you listening to it? ;)

The problem is not the lack or the excess of colors...

It is only a symptom or a manifestation of unbalanced components synergy or the presence of a too harsh and bright component or of a too warm one...

The debate between colors and neutral is a red herring from the real problem which is synergy between components and acoustic embeddings.

I think this is exactly right. The word "color" is not helpful.

The question really is: "What are the ways to get my system to please my taste?"

If one answers with,

"I want to get back to the original recording’s intention" -- then:

(a) Do you want to sound like it did on their studio’s monitors (which were used to mix the recording)? Even if all recordings used the same monitors (and electronics), you’d be unable to do this for all the recordings you listened to.

(b) Do you want to capture the engineers’ intention? How would you know what that was? Which system did they intend it for? This would be impossible to determine and, again, varying from recording to recording.

(c) Ok, well maybe it’s a classical or live recording. You want to "hear the room." Ok, well where in the room do you want to be sitting? And what about your room’s acoustics? Maybe headphones are the answer, then.

If all these questions sound impossible to answer, then the above quotation is what you seek -- you want to try to please your own taste using room acoustics plus whatever else factors in. But let’s not talk about "getting back to the original recording" because that is a Fountain of Youth type of fantasy.

All this in mind, some equipment really does add additional harmonics and some room treatments do really muffle or over-exaggerate certain elements of the acoustics. If you like that -- fine. But if you don't, it's a question of knowing which levers to play with to reach your satisfaction or pleasure. It's not about what's "really" there. 

For home audio, you can add an equalizer and use it on or off and get any color you want for a lot less hustle.