We are going a bit off topic but basically tweaking the contrast, latitude and midtone saturation…then just toggle between v5 and v7 you can see how different the result is…
I am not advocating either as the final setting for an edit…and perhaps some people will acutally prefer to start out dull and then grade to taste but it would be easy for me to decide that the v5 settings were my new defaults and you can see the difference so sometimes broad statements can be a bit misleading…
v7
v5
Here is a re-edit of the Eurasian woodpecker using filmicRGB and some of the ideas you gave above. You are right, I had to really fiddle with it to get the colors I wanted, and I’m still not sure I was successful. For example, i had the tree bark as whiter than this; it now has a sort of pinkish brown to it. But, as always, I didn’t see the actual tree.
have a look at darktable's filmic FAQ
I agree I was making a generalization. But filmic is dull out of the box unless we tweak stuff or change the version. Sigmoid gives a nice result straight out of the box more often and AgX has more flexibility than Sigmoid, but is not as demanding as Filmic. I am not trying to bag out filmic as such but pointing out that it requires the most intervention and Sigmoid the least.
My point was more about using the term filmic as if it defined the “dull” opiton… sigmoid is out of the box set for a slope of 1.5 and no argument it generally gives a decently tonemapped image with decent color…Filmic used to be 1.3 at one time but now comes in at 1.0…doing the same with sigmoid dulls its initial output as well. I think in Ansel, AP modified it recently to be defaulted to 1.18…why no idea but likely felt maybe 1 was just a bit too flat??
I prefer working with v5 and the latitude and midtone saturation curve, but even the “flat” or flatter v7 is or can be amped up substantially by just choosing a different contrast setting…add to that the saturation slider which has a soft limit of 50 which at times doesn’t add a massive bump to color but it can be set as high as 200 which will drive things over the top.
So to a certain degree it can be about the chosen default settings for the module and not the tonemapping option that can produce the “dull” starting point…maybe its semantics
Any way we are already at a point where this should likely be moved out of this topic and honestly most of this has be thrashed about every which way and sideways already so its nothing new…
Thanks @priort for your reply. I guess we crept into this discussion of tone mappers because the OP was using DT4.6 and since then additional tone mapping options have come out.
It was due to previous discussions with you that I have a preset in filmic for V5 with no chrominance preservation. On the rare occasion when I do use filmic I prefer V5 over V7. They are two very different looking beasts. I was never trying to imply that that filmic had to give a dull result, but AP intended for filmic to be used in combination with tone equalizer and color balance rgb to get the final look.
There are rare occasions when I will try and compare filmic V7, film V5, AgX, Sigmoid and even base curve to see which gives me the ‘best’ result for the specific image. It is great that DT gives choices.
Ya these things slide and really my comments were just thinking about anybody landing in here without the benefit of all those past discussions around filmic and the history of its evolution… 
