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(Continued
from previous page) Some minor nitpicking: I heard some crosstalk on one occasion, but couldn't repeat it later. I could faintly hear the audio portion of the VCR's tuner output coming through when I powered off my other source. Mostly, however, the Casablanca II was a huge improvement over the original in everyday use. Gone were the lockups that would frequently occur when I turned my old Casablanca on (I was batting around .500), and even occasionally when I was using it. Gone was the old model's extremely annoying habit of intercepting commands sent to my Denon DVD player and Sony DirecTV receiver and interpreting them in ways undesired-like switching between analog and digital or firing up the balance or setup menus. For those improvements alone, original Casablanca owners should rejoice-and upgrade. The "II" doesn't mean just "2-channel" With my turntable running in Analog Direct mode, the Casablanca II possessed even greater purity and depth than the original, with a soundstage that moved more incisively into the room. At the same time, it sounded smoother, with less of an edge; I found myself playing LPs comfortably at slightly higher volumes. Resolution was strictly at the mercy of the rest of my components, and the II had no reticence in these matters: Differences in amplifier perspectives, for example, were readily apparent.
The new crossovers really helped out in the bass as well. The MartinLogan Prodigy has the best bass of any ML speaker I've heard, short of the seven-times-more-expensive Statement, and the Casablanca's new Full With Low Pass crossover feature allowed me to exploit it to great effect. Bass was definitely more visceral, with less of the unavoidable one-note thump that creeps in with even the best subwoofers. The Theta's DACs seemed to get the most tuneful bass possible from the Prodigys in simple, straight 2-channel as well. About five minutes into chapter 10 of The Doors (Artisan Special Edition 10810), "The End" is remixed for 5.1 and injected with sound effects to match the original audio to the new video. The Casablanca II had no trouble convincing me that I was witnessing an original event. From the Farfisa organ to the Gibson SG guitar, I was enthralled by what I heard in this great mix. There's something about the sound of live music that recorded music never duplicates. Walk by a garage where a band is practicing and you just know it's live music, not someone cranking the stereo. Earlier in The Doors, when the still-to-be-discovered band is practicing "Light My Fire," the sound was so authentic, so reminiscent of the sound of a live band rehearsing, that I was taken aback. Kudos to Oliver Stone, but the Theta gets a lot of credit too. Conclusion Expensive, gorgeous, a bit finicky but less so than any girlfriend I've ever had, Theta Digital's Casablanca II is a piece of art disguised as a consumer-electronics component.
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A
raft of DVDs passed through the Casablanca II. Some of them, like
The 6th Day (Columbia TriStar 05074) and the DTS-equipped
Bring It On (Universal 20960), sounded incredible, with no
touchups required. More classic fare, like Lawrence of Arabia
(Columbia TriStar 05832), showed its age gracefully. While Theta
doesn't have a THX certification (their excessive crossover parameters
are counter to THX's 80Hz-or-bust philosophy), they do offer four
levels of high-frequency equalization for curing harsh soundtracks.
But to Theta's credit, their processor sounded so clean, so pure,
that the harshness threshold was rarely crossed.
