Subtractive and Additive?

In my opinion, every part in the signal path is adding something to the sound. If you believe that every passive component has a sound (think mylar, poly, teflon caps; carbon, metal film, and naked vishay resistors; cheap diodes vice hexfreds), than the components you use will tailor the sound. So, designers don't "add" something to the signal in the sense of putting something there that wasn't really there in the first place, but they sure can shape how a piece of gear sounds by the choice of their circuit and the parts they use.

microstrip said:

Most of the best hifi components are not completely neutral in the sense they do not change the signal - if they were neutral they would sound all the same, and I have never had two different preamplifiers that sound the same. Some of them manipulate the signal in a way it helps us recreate our image of music.

Do you thing that great designers add something to the signal that enhances the music or they simply remove nasty information that masks our perception of some information existing in the recorded music?

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I think that designers at time take advantage of the ear's ability to adapt and to listen through certain distortions (and not others). For instance, Jon Dahlquist once opined that it's easier for the ear to listen to a speaker coloration if it's consistent from top to bottom of the frequency spectrum. I think that ties into what I was trying to explain to Neil a week ago about why some colorations go away while others decrease in magnitude but never completely disappear.

I think the corrollary is that there are some things that we find out about our systems only when we find a better component because the ear adapted to that coloration. One example might be noise floor and transparency (though over the years I've become more attuned to the issue of noise) esp. say with phono sections.

Like a Pizza, add away, more cheese, more pepperoni, more sauce, more crust, more, more, and still more............heck just make it two pizzas.

Audio gluttony rules even if it means you have to knife and fork it.

There is one component category that I am sure adds nothing to the signal (except external noise in the form of rfi and emi) but I am sure subtracts: Cables.