How do people voice their systems? For a long time, I was of the holistic/subtractive camp. This would basically be taking a temperature of the system as a whole, removing one piece, and replacing that piece. This has some appeal, as it doesn't require a surplus of gear. One item comes, one item goes, net zero. Well, since you paid more for the replacement than the outgoing, not quite zero in the net.
Lately though, this strikes me as a terribly haphazard way to go about things. All the assessments I've been doing have been on the Red Wine Amps, as they are extremely transparent and pretty darn neutral. They don't have a tremendous personality of their own and really let me hear what's going on upstream. I don't have an analog preamp and this is something I will need to have with the system reconfiguration.
While I don't think a TVC will be my ultimate choice for enjoyment of the system, it will be an excellent companion to the Red Wine amps in the transparency department.
The Lessloss DAC is neutrally voiced and it turns out the Definitions aren't as inherently warm as I thought they were.
The natural conclusion I'm getting to is I think having a set of gears on-hand to maximize overall system transparency and neutrality will make it MUCH easier to evaluate incoming components. Maybe this thought derives from all the thinking I've been doing related to my new post, but I think for an active audiophile it makes a lot of sense. How else to better evaluate a new whatever than to drop it into a system chosen for to highlight the newcomer?
Of course, this means you might have a couple of different "fun" combos available, mixing warmer, more "colored" gear with the bleached glass stuff. It also means you'll probably have a couple of different preamps and amps laying around which isn't financially viable for a lot of folks.
How do you approach this age-old puzzle?