" I believe that components should be tranparent and any colorization should come from the recording engineer. "

B&W Loudspeakers lab in England, when testing speakers don't even use a pre-amp, amp only.

"Elecronic componentes will be audibly indistinguishable if they have:
1- Flat Frequency Response
2- Noise and Distortion levels below audible thresholds
3- High Input impedance and low output impedance"

In theory I beleive this to be correct, but in the real world, they do sound different. I remember when I first got into high end audio, and was choosing between a California Audio labs DX-2, and a less expensive Rotel CD player. There was a clear, and I mean clear difference between both units that my wife even heard. CAL Audio was the winner by the way.

Give me a Rotel 1066 and a Anthem Statement D1, and I will pick the Antem out everytime.. I know.. because I've done it.