Digital A/V Controllers
     Casablanca III
     Six Shooter

Digital to Analog Converters
     Generation VIII

Power Amplifiers
     Citadel
     Enterprise
     Dreadnaught II
  > Intrepid
     > General Information
        Specifications
        Reviews
        Owners Manual

Theta Dealer Locator page

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use
© Copyright Theta Digital Corporation.

THE INTREPID IS A SOLID STATE, FULLY BALANCED POWER AMPLIFIER WITH FIVE BUILT-IN CHANNELS. DELIVERING A POWERFUL 100-WATTS/CHANNEL INTO AN 8-OHM LOAD (200W INTO 4-OHMS), EACH OF INTREPID'S CHANNELS HAS SINGLE-ENDED AND BALANCED INPUTS.

Dynamic Power

Many home audio amplifiers are grossly underpowered for serious music and home theater enthusiasts. Intrepid is fully capable of delivering 100 watts into 8 ohms, 200 watts into 4 ohms and even more into 2 ohms. The dynamic headroom of the Intrepid allows it to deliver even greater power than these steady state ratings.

Intrepid has fully-balanced differential circuits, employing zero-feedback.

No Global Negative Feedback

Feedback is a term used to describe an electrical circuit design that applies a portion of the output of a circuit back to the input.

Feedback applied to only one stage is called local. A feedback path encompassing two or more stages is called global feedback.

Local feedback is very common in analog circuits. It stabilizes, sets operating points, limits unwanted oscillation, reduces distortion, and protects delicate devices from potential damage. Local feedback is applied almost immediately back to the input, with very little delay. Intrepid uses local feedback.

Global feedback is very commonly used to "correct" an amplifier's distortion. It can be used to stabilize circuits that are unstable on their own. Global feedback creates significant time delay within the "loop," due to the number of stages the signal must pass before being applied back to the input. Time delay causes a smearing of imaging, and harshness in the upper midrange. The audible effects of global feedback vary, depending on the magnitude of feedback and the circuit they are correcting. Nearly all power amplifiers use global feedback in large proportions.

Intrepid contains no global feedback at all. The result is a very clean, pure, and fast circuit from input to output.

Components

Only the highest grade electronic components are chosen for Intrepid. Wima film capacitors are used exclusively for power supply bypassing. Nichicon electrolytic capacitors were chosen for power supply filtering due to their superior long-term performance and audio characteristics. Three and four layer custom manufactured glass-epoxy circuit boards, with heavy copper plating, were specified to carry the high-current Intrepid can produce.

Intrepid controls include a front-panel Standby mode that mutes and reduces idling current to all channels. The control can also be activated through a remote control jack on the back of the chassis, which would bring a trigger signal from another unit, such as a Casablanca II or Casa Nova. Standby can also be activated by connecting the Intrepid's bi-directional RS-232 port to a computer or other control device, such as one by AMX or Crestron.

Fully-Balanced Differential

Each channel of Intrepid's amplification is made up of two mirror-imaged signal paths. Balanced signals are carried through as such; an unbalanced signal is cloned as it comes in, and this phase-inverted duplicate sent through two identical amplification pathways. Then, at the amp's output, the two signals are reconciled. Anything not perfectly "mirror imaged" between the two signals is discarded (called "common mode rejection"). Those discontinuities are noise picked up in the course of amplification. Eliminating noise this way preserves the integrity of the amplified signal.

Other means of dealing with noise are cruder; "dirty" in that they leave artifacts in the signal; phase anomalies which degrade spatial information; intermodulation distortion, which makes timbres sound wrong and otherwise contaminates sound.

Although many highly regarded amplifiers provide XLR input connectors to receive balanced signals, the mere presence of "balanced inputs" is no guarantee that balanced circuitry is in the amplifier itself. True balanced circuitry is rarely implemented because it requires almost twice as many devices as conventional amplification. We wouldn't invest this much in high quality components if we could figure out an easier way of getting such pristine results.

Click here for technical specifications...