Your headphones need a language
Giella is an all analogue headphone amplifier with a single purpose: To give you a thrill when listening to music.
Therefore its design is simple, yet extremely refined. Like with all my products, the electronic components are measured and selected into tolerances that are impossible to buy. And the specific combinations used in Giella are chosen with hundreds of comparative listening tests. It’s all about listening and deciding what’s better and what’s worse. What makes the music more gripping and what makes it less.
Giella started with a circuit idea in 2014. The original design was simpler and about 2/3 as expensive as the final version. In the summer of 2020, I had tuned every part of the original circuit and couldn’t improve it any further. I enjoyed listening to music with it, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled. It just wasn’t good enough. So I redesigned it with a different set of components and the power supply used in my Moving Coil phono stage Entity. This new version of Giella was a completely different beast. After spending a few months tuning it, I found myself using it every day.
There’s no DAC or remote control feature in Giella, because the absence of anything digital inside Giella helps it reach a new level of performance, without adding massive cost.
The only extra feature on Giella, apart from controlling the volume and driving your headphones, is a left and right analogue output. These can be connected to a power amplifier and speakers. Giella will then function as a very high quality pre amplifier. A compact and very engaging system, perhaps for the office or the cottage, can be built around Giella.
Giella is Sami for ‘language’.
Giella was discontinued in March 2023, but it’s successor Giella ∏ remains in production. If you own a Giella, it can still be upgraded to version ∏.
Version history
- Version 1.0
- Introduced in December 2020
- Version 1.1
- Introduced 7th of February 2023
- New chassis ground parts and fastening torque
- Sound improvement: Yes
- Previous model upgradable: Yes
- Version 1.2
- Introduced 7th of February 2023
- One important resistor added to the circuit, selected to a precision of +/-0.003%
- Sound improvement: Yes
- Previous model upgradable: Yes