How do you add color?

....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. 

Equalizer mechanical or electronic one are tools not the solution... i used the two types ...

As building a house ask for many tools used in some balance way and in some order, you must use many tools and tweaks to reach a specific balance ratio for each system/room which will not be nor colored nor neutral but will display his specific "hue" ...

Synergy between components is the first factor, to create an ideal balance ask for more work and for some tools and embeddings controls ...

if we dont have synergy to begin with the rest of work will not be easy and inj many cases even doable...No amount of equalization will replace synergy in many cases or a component which pair not well with another one...

if you dac is too harsh coupling it with an analytical amplifier sound will not result in an optimal balance even if equalization will decrease the harshness or the fatigue a bit...And if the room is to echoing or not set for this case it will be more disastrous..

Reaching balance is a complex problems in all working embeddings dimensions and begin with the right or wrong synergy... It is not easy to figure it out, it was not for me...

Paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa?