I first posted on these forums after stumbling across the 30.2 and wondering whether it might be the integrated amp I was looking for. I fretted for months with the RWA shortlisted along with Rotel and Naim (both of which I've happily owned in the past) as well as Leben, AVI, Bryston, Perreaux, Lavardin and Decware. With the 30.2 I was somewhat put off by the lack of inputs following the discontinuing of the 3S source selector and at the same time was somewhat curious about the up-and-coming Isabella. Vinnie kindly offered to send me an external passive volume and stepped attenuator in order to compare the 30.2 with and without the Isabella. When the time finally came to order however, I figured either I would like the RWA sound or I wouldn't, so I went ahead and ordered the Isabella/30.2 combo thinking I would likely keep both, or neither.
I've had the Isabella for three and a half months. This isn't really an attempt at a review. I'm not very good at describing these things and although I'm (admittedly, surely) an audiophile by any sane person's definition, I'm not a hobbyist who buys and sells and listens to a lot of gear. While I've listened to quite a bit of gear, I reckon it would be less than the average person who hangs around these forums so take my comments in that spirit. Growing up with vinyl in the '70s and '80s we never had a proper stereo and a typical evening in my teenage-angst years would be uplifting the cheap record player from the family room and carting it to the bedroom to listen to Led Zeppelin, Hackett-era Genesis, Pink Floyd, Osbourne-era Black Sabbath and Queen with massive headphones at head-splitting volumes. At the time it was bliss. Now, there is a continuous ringing in my ears (tinnitus) which is a result of the bedroom sessions and too many Cure and Red Hit Chili Peppers rock concerts in my misspent youth. Despite this, when measured, I've always been able to make out very high frequencies with hearing testing well above average (with recent worsening now down to average as I get into middle age) but I "hear" these frequencies not from a quiet background but on top of a loud layer of hiss, like a continuous ringing cymbal. I know what you're thinking. Why is this deaf guy bothering to write about audio gear: the thing is I think it makes me even more fussy than the normally equipped when it comes to music replay as harsh sounding systems for me are completely unlistenable. I took my kid to a children's concert not so long ago. It was a piano, vocal, trumpet ensemble in a small indoor arena that would have sounded great unamplified but which they insisted on playing through a PA system at what seemed to me to be at 10 (or even 11 using a Spinal Tap amp) on the volume scale. I had to cover my ears then remove myself to the back row, but no one else seemed to care.
As a completely broke student in my late teens I studied speaker design and built my own what I (of course) thought were the greatest high efficiency speakers ever made. Source was a cheap Sony Discman with headphone socket feeding a cheap 150WPC Trakton car power amp. I powered the amp off the mains using a heavy-duty vehicle battery charger. I wish I'd photographed this system, it was hilarious looking but loud enough for student parties and to seriously annoy the neighbors. While the amp sounded just as loud running off the charger as it did direct from a 12V car battery, the indoor charger's inability to swing more than about 5 or 6 amps (compared with 25 from the battery) so limiting power output to about 36WPC, and being able to compare the AC/DC back and forth, gave me some appreciation of what lack of current sounds like. More power sounds not louder but more clear and less fatiguing. What can seem at first an exciting, sparkly and forward presentation in the upper mid range along with a slightly soft but otherwise OK bass can sometimes just be an amp's inability to swing enough current and I do still notice these artifacts with some of the lower-powered (but not necessarily lower priced) 'exciting' sounding amps that are still around even today.
Getting down to the sound of the Isabella, the 6 moons and Tone Audio reviews I thought summed things up pretty much as I would have if I could write that well (I'd put in my order for the Isabella before these were published) and regarding people's descriptions of the Isabella sounding 'organic', I would describe it as the music being 'presented' rather than 'pushed'. If you are a detail freak you might describe it as a bit veiled; you need to 'go into' or be drawn in to the music and this takes a little time to adjust to if you're used to a more in-your-face presentation. Still, if you were out digging in the garden and dug up a preamp, it would be this one.
On Vinnie's recommendation, I picked up a pair of Sennheiser HD-650 cans to pair with the Isabella for occasional headphone listening, however it was immediately obvious that this was a seriously good combo and that along with the fact I'm now in a condo and can't nudge the volume too much or for too long, means it's now become my main way of listening, just as it was in the good old days. I listen to alternative rock, grunge, rock, hard rock, glam/prog rock, jazz, blues, soul, vocal, classical, reggae, new age, folk, and a little country (I hang my head in shame...). One of my favorite bands is The Church, which IMO is the best band ever to come out of Australasia. A very mystical and sweet sounding group that's hung around for a couple of decades despite no recent attempts to produce anything remotely commercial sounding. A lot of my stuff is older or not that well produced -- Cash, Sinatra, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zep, Hendrix, Elton John, The Who, Bowie, Yes, etc -- and it is with these that the Isabella comes to the fore and to me that is the mark of a good, low distortion amp. Really well produced recordings are revealed as they should be (I second Vinnie's recommendation of Dreaming of Revenge by Kaki King, awesome CD); deliberately overproduced work e.g., Smashing Pumpkins is getting borderline with the Isabella revealing the (deliberate) bass distortion in the recording that less meaty amps wouldn't, but still doing so in an enjoyable and listenable manner; and the really bad stuff still sounds, well, really bad. Bomb by U2 always seemed a lost cause and still is. On balance, I think there's little point in seeking out a replay system that's so resolving that only superbly mastered work sounds fantastic with everything else a bit off. The point surely is to enjoy more of your collection and not less. At this, the Isabella succeeds. Using the oppo DVD as transport via coax s/pdif and listening to Chet Baker Live in Tokyo, from the first few notes in was obvious there is serious bass happening here. I really don't know how Vinnie does this.
He doesn't release measurements and seems to trust his ears, along with a few other respected designers, e.g., amps by NVA and Leben that are voiced by ear to name a couple. There are of course other designers who insist that measurements and science are the be all and end all (with amps and DACs in particular), that 'neutrality' --whatever the heck that means-- is correct and that you can't actually trust your own ears because your brains get in the way and you can get used to crap sound over the years and this becomes your reference. All old-fashioned distorting tube gear and outdated DAC chips fit this category, of course. Hmmmm, well, whether that's right or wrong, if my ears are wrong and I like what I hear, as a punter I do know how I will be spending the cash.
Vinnie suggests the Isabella needs a couple of hundred hours to burn in. To be honest, I'm skeptical of the 'burn in' phenomenon but whether or not it exists or is partly or entirely all in the head, the Isabella did seem subjectively to improve over time, and just in case I wanted to wait until I'd put sufficient hours on it before writing here. In particular the higher frequencies that at first are slightly lacking and resulting in a quite laid back presentation, do loosen up and everything 'breathes' a little better with time. I see others have tried tube rolling and reported improvements in the higher frequencies. This is fine, but to my ears the stock tubes result in a perfectly balanced presentation with no mid range glare at all now that the Isabella, my ears, my brain and my cans are fully cooked.
Regarding cost. It is not cheap and you do feel it when you write the check. However, When considering the cost savings of streaming digitally generally off the grid --transport savings, extra interconnects, exotic power cables and conditioners, extra boxes for separate DACS and headphone amps and swanky room treatments (with nothing glaring to tame to begin with, the Isabella/30.2 sounds fine in a 'live' untreated room to me - I have bare floors and glass all over the place) suddenly it all begins looking a lot more reasonable. I'm not trying to tell anyone how to think, just that it can be helpful to consider the full cost of an audio system before concluding that a particular component is too pricey. As someone who recently came very close to spending quite a sizable chuck of change on a high end CD transport and turntable, I'm now glad I didn't. There are many Apple Mac users here of course getting great results, and I will say that I'm getting excellent results as well even more cheaply with Windows laptops using JRiver Media Jukebox and the ASIO4ALL driver (both free). With the USB/I2S interface there seems no need to get hung up over sound cards costing between 200 and 700 dollars that are capable of putting out a bit-perfect digital stream as the Isabella is simply treated by Windows as an external soundcard.
