Creeper, I don't think I'm being defensive but my response was on the topic of this thread from a different angle. I have his historically listened to vandy's, non-upsampling tube DACS and highly regarded tube pre-amps, the last one was the Hovland, and found these different pieces just O.K. It's just personnal taste in the long run but I'm not looking for a "fat" overly warm sound in my system. The reference of live music has many colors/timbres not just one overall euphonic coloration. It has oftened been stated to try not to use wires in a system as "tone controls" because you can compound a present difficulty, I believe the same thing can happen when a listener uses a euphonic piece upstream in their system to get rid of harshness, glare, or an etched quality.
