Member Reviews: Red Wine Audio Isabella Preamp / Headphone Amp

I was able to convince Vinnie Rossi from RedWineAudio to send me his Isabella headphone amp/preamp for review. The Isabella is a high end product to be sure, and the physical design is luxurious – beautiful casework, nice touches like a touch-sensitive power switch, high-end chassis-mounted jacks, etc,., etc. – it is incredibly well built and is a thing of beauty to behold: Really the only nit I can pick with the construction is the rear-panel location of the headphone jack. This could be major pain for some folks, depending on their intended usage. According to RWA, this is done to provide the shortest signal path. And it does also show that the real intent of this product is as a...

i agree with pretty much everything skylab has written about the isabella,however, in my opinion- i think the isabella is a real bargain @ 6k. at this past 2010 canjam that i attended,i heard a 10k amp plugged into a 14k cd player = 24k in which i would not trade my isabella for,no way!    just like many here on head-fi call the sony r-10 s "the king of dynamic headphones" i consider the isabella pre-amp to be the king of tonality! in addition to its wonderfull rich tone,the isabella is the most organic and natural sound i have heard from any piece of audio i have owned,or have listened to from the countless  meets that i have attended since 2005!  my ears are highly...