Tholt - the listening room was built with 2 channel audio in mind, from the acoustic ceiling paint and a few angled absorbent ports, to the no-standing-wave angles. The speakers and fat leather chair are set using the Cardas Golden Ratio or Fibonacci numbers from their excellently informative website.
The room and treatment is the single biggest improvement I feel anyone could make to any system.
Cmalak - I've toyed with the idea of Red Wine products and appreciate your pointing the articles out. I'll have to move them up in my list and make it a point to find a demo/demo location. They (Red Wine) seem very boutique-ish. One of those companies that everyone knows of, and have a friend of a friend who heard them once.... but no one ever seems to own them.
As a Squeezebox owner their forums rave about the Red Wine mods.
I think I will focus on the DAC and the Isabella may be the way to go. The amp/speaker combo has what I want. Perhaps a new streaming transport with a nice built in DAC will be a route also: Squeezebox is now owned by Logitech. While the sound is super with the DAC, I feel I should try other transports that aren't made by a mouse and webcam company.