That simply means you prefer the coloration of certain preamps. Nothing wrong with it, but it is a personal preference. They're masking or changing characteristics of your source to a greater degree. Many DACs "work" just fine without preamps though. EAR, Bricasti, PS Audio, Schiit, MSB just to name a few. Heck, even TotalDac claims to be able to drive anything above 100ohm directly without distortion and has 40 Ohm OI and something like 3.3 Vrms out. A perfect candidate for no active preamp. Whether or not you prefer the more transparent direct sound out of these DACs is merely subjective. Regarding the "maximize sound" objective, there are plenty of us who have empirically found the elimination of active components in the chain to do exactly that. It's just that your "maximum" might be my local minimum or thereabouts. As far as philosophy, yes, it stands to reason that everything we need is already in the grooves, 1s and 0s, or magnetic tape particles and preamps can't add musical content.