I believe it’s just a personal choice that is initially made by amp designers, about whether their goal is accuracy or a certain flavored sound recipe that is targeted toward a particular segment of audio equipment consumers. We as consumers then make an almost identical decision about which amp designs best match our personal overall system sound preferences and vote with our dollars.
Personally, I preferred the flavored camp for years, using a VTL with expensive NOS Mullard tubes rolled in, although always paired with various good quality and powerful class AB ss amps due to using inefficient 87dB planar speakers. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed listening to music via a high quality all tube system, however, they were never my system due to my preference for inefficient planar-magnetic speakers. Currently, I use a neutral and accurate Parasound Halo P-5 preamp paired with neutral, accurate and powerful ss class D monoblock amps and find the overall sound just as enjoyable.
After migrating from a flavored system to a neutral and accurate system, my main lesson learned is that I perceive both types of systems about equally enjoyable in my room. They both are able to convey the same sweetness, warmth, dimensionality and slightly euphonic nature on most of my familiar music. The only prerequisite on my current neutral and accurate system is that the recording be of high quality, a bad recording will obviously sound like it on my current system.
The main reasons I’ve chosen to remain with a neutral and accurate system are because I have a large collection of mostly very well recorded music, typically hi-res files recorded direct to digital, and because I’m able to so clearly perceive any effects of system changes such as recording quality, component, interconnect and speaker wire changes.
Tim
