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THETA DIGITAL'S DS PRO BASIC IIIA DAC HAS BEEN AROUND FOR APPROXIMATELY FOUR YEARS, BUT IS STILL IN PRODUCTION. It has many of the best design features of the Gen 5a, Theta's more upscale DAC. The Carmen, Theta's entry-level transport, is based on a DVD transport, and also includes design features and circuitry from their better transports. I auditioned the two components with my Rowland Concentra integrated amplifier and Sonus Faber Electa Amator speakers, using MIT MH 750 bi-wire cables and Transparent Audio MusicLink interconnects. I compared the Theta combo to my Rotel RCD-975 CD player. This was a good comparison, because while all were true high end components, they were also designed to relatively economical price points. I began my listening with one of my favorite CDs, the acapella choral CD Boca, The Best of College Acapella, featuring The Stanford Fleet Street Singers. The "Ave Maria" track is always exquisite, but played through the Theta gear, it stopped me dead in my tracks. Voices that had remained buried in the choir suddenly showed themselves, distinctly separated in space. I then reached for CDs featuring acoustic guitars and string instruments, starting with the gritty, hard rockin' country sound of Lucinda Williams singing "Can't Let Go," from her Car Wheels on a Gravel Road CD. This song drives you out of your seat; it is full of guitars, rhythmic pace, and emotionally wrenching lyrics. The Theta gear rendered it with amazing detail, much more resolution, great pace. Musical, musical, musical. I was hearing a breakthrough. Just when I thought that the state of the art in CD reproduction had been reached, fresh experiences were still available. I next listened to Beethoven's
String Trios with Mutter, Giuranna, and Rostropovich. Powerful,
moving, and again, so many nuances Later, I had two fun revelations. First, my favorite CDs sounded so good that it made me think of some lesser favorites that are great songs or performances ruined by bad, even terrible recordings. One example is a Junior Wells blues track on a horrid CD I bought for 99 cents. One track is his great song "Chitlin Con Carne," in which junior grunts and wails his heart out on his harmonica. The microphone is often overloaded, and the recording is about the worst ever, but I tried it anyway, and the Theta gear absolutely violated the audio law of "garbage in, garbage out." I can't adequately explain it. The music won out. The various veiled, smeared, and bright sounds were swept aside. I tried other dogs, and found that the Theta gear was forgiving and heroic in each instance. Since far too many CDs are less than perfect, I can't imagine a more practical or valuable characteristic for digital gear. My second revelation was listening to DVDs with my two-channel system. Many of my DVDs have PCM data soundtracks, and I loved listening to the dramatic music behind the opening or closing credits of these movies, as well as several concert DVDs. Even though many of my friends and colleagues are burned out on the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over, I'm not! The opening track, "Hotel California," rocks and rocks! The DVD features an uncompressed digital stereo soundtrack that is amazingly close to "live in your room" sound! The Theta gear stepped up to the plate and hit the ball out of the park. One of the pitfalls of reviewing equipment is that after repeatedly hearing small differences between similar gear, a reviewer can fall into a mode where his or her expectations are that ONLY small differences will be heard in a piece under review. I bring this up only to share that the Theta gear broke the low-expectation mold! It showed a radical 10 to 20 percent improvement. I realize that these numbers don't relate to any objective test-bench numbers, but I want to give this gear the strong praise it deserves for the superior music that it produced. New digital technologies will soon be on the horizon, but I wholeheartedly endorse the DS Pro Basic IIIa and Carmen transport. They are true high end components with truly great performance at real world prices, available today. Roger McNichols, Jr. Theta, known for building solid, well-engineered transports and DACs, is a leader in digital audio, having released many products that have been on reviewers' "Best Of" lists. Like many other manufacturers, Theta believes that its future lies in the home theater arena, which means that while they continue to make audio DACs and CD transports, their current push is for universal CD/ DVD/DVD-A transports and surround-sound processors. The Carmen is the entry-level transport in the Theta line, and while it is not inexpensive, it offers video features and capabilities that far exceed those of most DVD players. The Carmen can do just about do anything short of making popcorn when the time comes for watching a movie. It does require an outboard DAC for D/A conversion (for both 2 and 5.1 channels) but for video, just hook the unit up and enjoy a movie, with the sound courtesy of your TV As for listening to CDs, the unit has many user-friendly options and menus that make my EAD T 1000 seem rather dated (which it is, at eight years and counting). I compared the Carmen to my modified EAD T1000 for CDs and my stock Toshiba SD3109 DVD player for movies. The DAC was either the EVS 1 B or the EVS II, as well as Theta's Pro Basic IIIA. The units were set on either a Townshend 3D sink or BDR cones, and fed AC from a PS Audio 300 Power Plant with Sahuaro power cords. I used either the supplied Theta AES/EBU cable (with the Theta DAC) or my JPS digital cable (with the EVS DACs). For video, the signal was fed into my 31" Hitachi via a Faroujda digital comb filter, cabling being either TwistedPair or Canare. Via the Carmen, music was bigger and bolder, but also less transparent, with less pace, and lacking an inner sense of clarity. The EAD was more open and revealing of musical lines, textures, and details, while offering a much deeper soundstage with a considerably greater sense of body, air and dimensionality. None of these, save the soundstage and dimensional artifacts, were of large degree. It took a lot of going back and forth to hear what I eventually found to be the sonic differences between the two units. Theta's "trademark" bass slam and power was evident, but the EAD was a close second, with greater clarity and speed, so that even in the deepest regions I found neither a clear winner. But let's get to the real issue here. Was the Theta musical? The Theta's sound was not really better or worse than the EAD's, just different. In my book that speaks well of the Carmen. My system has evolved over many years, as I slowly found components to complement the rest of the chain, so while the Carmen came in second, it has nothing to be ashamed of. As for video, the Carmen offered such a beautiful picture that going back to the Toshiba was a letdown. Until then, I had never thought DVD could get any better, but the Carmen, a real winner in image clarity and color, showed me what DVD can really look like.
Dave Clark.
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