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IN THE EARLY 1970s, VOLKSWAGON RAN A TV AD IN WHICH TWO BEETLES SAT SIDE BY SIDE: ONE FROM THE CURRENT YEAR'S CROP, THE OTHER THE PREVIOUS YEAR'S MODEL. While viewers sat dumbfounded, searching-on NTSC sets, no less-for even a single visible difference, the announcer described some of the hundreds of little changes that VW had incorporated into their new honey. The same ad would work with Theta's original Casablanca and the sequel presented here. Put on your coveralls, we're going under the hood. Unplugged, only the telltale buildup of fingerprints on the front panel of my three-year-old reference and the review unit's subtly silk-screened, dark-gray-on-silver "II" distinguish the two Casablancas. After powering up, a more significant difference appears-the II's display uses fluorescent blue LEDs against a black background, while the original unit's dull green lettering on an even duller green field is less visible at any distance.
Casablanca owners can update their units to II status with a swap of innards. These upgrades are "affordable," by high-end standards, but there are too many possible options to list here. Your Casablanca can be upgraded cosmetically as well, although obviously you'll have to determine if changing the murky green display panel to blue is worth $550 to you. I'd put my money into more or better DACs-but I'm getting ahead of myself. There'll be plenty of time to discuss financing ... er, Mr. Smith, was it? The Dee Tells The Theta Casablanca II is, essentially, a very sophisticated computer: a few buttons on the front and eight slots for plug-in cards in back. The first slot is for the power-supply card and a master power switch. The front-panel On/Off switch powers down most of the circuitry, but all hard reboots are done with the rear Power switch. The power-supply card also has three programmable 12VDC trigger jacks to signal screens to drop or amps to power up. Finally, a 9pin RS-232 interface and a second RS-232 on a RJ45 plug are included to allow the Casablanca to be controlled by laptops or Crestron-type remote units, for those inclined to complexity for simplicity's sake.
You'll have to sit down with your dealer to determine what goes in the other seven slots. Only one style of analog input card is available, so your first decision will be easy. That card has six stereo inputs, and contains two stereo analog tape outputs for recording or feeding to a remote system even in this digital age, there appears to be no shortage of analog sources. I used all six of the available inputs, for my satellite TV receiver, an FM tuner, the stereo output from my DVD player (for playing 24bit/96kHz DVD recordings), a Sega Dreamcast (R.I.P-after all the hype about the Sony PlayStation 2, Sega has pulled the plug on this excellent game console), a VCR (for use as an NTSC tuner only-honest!), and, by way of my Audio Research SP14 preamp's phono stage, my glorious VPI/JMW/ Grado record player. Theta includes two types of digital input cards, both of which are standard. The first, which you'll definitely want, has six coaxial (RCA) and two TosLink inputs, and can handle digital signals from 16 to 24 bits at sampling rates of 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, and 96kHz. Two coaxial digital outputs complete the standard features of this card, though there are placeholders for two optional AT&T or Theta's proprietary Single Mode Laserlinque optical inputs. The second
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Once
I'd looked under the II's hood, however, the differences were so
obvious that it's easier to describe the new unit on its own terms
than continually drawing comparisons to the original, a sample of
which I'll wager few readers own anyway. At its high price, the
original Casablanca easily enforced its own exclusivity. The Casablanca
II continues that tradition and, should you opt for some of its
more ambitious configurations, even ups the ante.
