With dedicated regulated feeds for each board and ultra-short signal paths and optimized circuits, the result is a cleaner system. According to Rossi, the tone is “all there”, but low-level volume listening is significantly improved. The new system is more resolving and open, more dynamic and more extended, delivering and almost electrostatic speed (instead of electro-chemical!). User upgradeability, with what Rossi is confidently calling a “vast improvement” in power supply technology, is creating a platform that will carry himself forward. Decide later that you need the one you don’t have? Order the jack you don’t have. The headphone amp, for example, you can order with either a “standard” ¼” TRS phono plug or a 4-pin balanced XLR plug. Get what you need now, add the desired modules later. You can create an integrated amplifier, add your choice of preamp sections (an autoformer-based passive or stepped resistor-based active, which can have an optional tube stage), the number of inputs you need, a DSD-capable DAC, a phono pre, and even a headphone amplifier. It’s completely modular and the configuration options are pretty amazing - it’s all up to you. The new LIO is a platform more than a product, it turns out. And, in another innovative wrinkle, if anything goes wrong - you plug the output to the input by accident or something weird - fixing the issue will be rather simple. More current, faster delivery, and now, with a million-cycle life - unlike rechargeable batteries, which need to be replaced ever couple of years with regular use, the ultra caps will most likely outlive their owners. Replacing the batteries this time is a new approach - Rossi is leaning on banks of ultra-capacitors instead. His first product under this new venture is called LIO, an acronym for the three women in his life: his daughters Lilliana, Isabella, and his brand new wife (as of the end of August), Oiwah (you probably know her by her middle name, Alexis). Walking away from batteries was not something Rossi did lightly, but with his new brand, Vinnie Rossi, he does just that. With batteries, your system was “off the grid”, and in my own listening to those components, I heard the blackest backgrounds I’ve ever even dreamed of.
Dirty, noisy, not enough, too much, whatever. Batteries, Rossi learned, were able to deliver shocking current with unbelievable speed, all the while completely eliminating one of the most bedeviling issue plaguing high-end audio: power. Integrated amplifiers, DACs, phono preamplifiers, amp/pre separates - all sported battery power supplies. If Red Wine Audio had any one defining trait, it was the batteries. It’s kinda weird to say it that way, because Rossi’s Red Wine Audio brand has been anything but traditional. Launched back at the New York Show, LIO is completely at right-angles to his “traditional” work.