My aim with this On Screen conversation was to probe into the philosophy in designing high-end source and amplification components, in an attempt to provide an understanding and foundation for our readers in their pursuit of upgrades, to realize "the best that it can be" in a home theatre and surround music system. We are fortunate that Theta Digital's founder and President, Neil Sinclair, accepted our invitation. Mary Cardas, Theta's National Sales Manager, accompanied Neil to our new facilities. Just prior to our conversation, Mary installed Theta's new, high-performance Xtreme DACs in our reference Theta Casablanca II Controller. These new DACs represent the state-of-the-art in D-to-A converter design and performance.

Gary Reber, Widescreen Review: I'd like to begin by discussing two key elements of a multichannel sound system, whether it's a surround music system or a home theatre surround system with multichannel audio. The elements are the source components and the amplification components. Source components set the limit for signal resolution for the entire system, and no component in the amplification stage can re-create signal information that's lost or damaged by the source components. What is the Theta philosophy when in comes to source component design and quality?

Neil Sinclair, Theta Digital: Essentially, our philosophy revolves around two issues. First, to intelligently capture what's there, and not impose changes. If I were a journalist, like you Gary, this would mean writing stories, but not editorials. At Theta, we apply the same philosophy for music and video components. We want to see what the record producer and the movie director want us to hear and see, without embellishments.

Second, we shun obsolescence. Since high-quality components are expensive, we design our products so they can be used for years, even during times of technological change. We make our components updateable and upgradable.

Digital technologies allow designers to take lots of shortcuts-which is good for non-demanding music and movie fans, as it allows for very low prices on components delivering base-level performance. It's also good for those of us for whom cinema and music are especially important-in the sense that the profits from components adequate for millions of casual viewers pay for the technologies companies like our own start from.

At Theta, we feel it's our job to do things right, and move beyond the cost-cutting mass-market solutions require. We also stay on top of advances in fields outside consumer audio/video. For example, an advance increasing the capabilities of a professional digital effects editor might be superfluous for consumer-grade products, but may help us improve a key Theta product. So might a development meant to allow a phone company to run more signals, noise--free, over longer distances.

We started experimenting with signal isolation in the mid-eighties, while working to achieve high-end resolution from CDs with our transports and D-to-A converters. We already knew digital signals create noise for analog signals, that power supplies create noise for analog and digital signals, that video signals also create noise, and so on. We learned a lot from our research about these and other important performance--related issues, including how to handle power, how to maximize isolation, how many transformers should be used, and how much rectification to apply and where. Building from this body of knowledge, we developed high-quality preamp processors and video transports.

Sinclair: Lesser audio players and processors combine as much as they can for cost-cutting reasons. They typically start with a single, small switching power supply that drives everything, while laser servos create havoc for all the signals. At Theta, we designed a separate power supply for each section of a DVD player. That's why our players are heavy. Other companies appear, in their advertising, to be copying this approach. They'll say their products have "12 power supplies," when they really just have 12 stages of rectification from one power supply. This provides a little isolation, but it's still all from one transformer.

Cardas: If you look at our Casablanca II Controller, you'll see every board is physically shielded from every other board. This protects each of the processing parts from noise or damage created by the others. In other processors, you won't see this shielding. In many, all these circuits share the same board!

WSR Reber: So one of the differences in higher-end audio or video reproduction involves minimizing the noise that happens whenever there's cross-pollution from power supplies? And it's vitally important to keep the signals as clean as possible?

Sinclair: It certainly should be.

WSR Reber: And that's why things get more costly?

Sinclair: It's one reason. And we're not talking about noise you can hear by putting an ear up to the speaker, but the kind that pollutes the signal so it gets a little murkier. You might not even notice this kind of noise until it's not there. In a video signal, it puts an artificial-looking sheen on the picture. Most people have never seen a picture as powerful as you can project here at the Widescreen Review Reference Lab-there's a great sense of three-dimensionality to the image. It's not just big and clear. You can bloody well see into the picture. It's like we've talked about for years with audio, concerning layering. We are such visually -oriented creatures-we can immediately see the improvements made by high-performance video equipment. Appreciating great audio is more of an acquired skill. Unfortunately, it's a skill acquired usually after we buy a good or not-so-good system.

Cardas: One of the marketing challenges we have is that there's nothing overtly wrong in the performance from a lot of today's inexpensive products, especially CD and DVD transports. If someone hooks one up with no other reference, they might not think they're missing anything until they turn on our Carmen DVD/CD Transport; or if they are a Carmen owner, move up to our David Transport. I recently spoke with a Carmen owner who moved up to a David and said he couldn't believe the difference. People can't imagine what they're missing.

Sinclair: We all use test discs, but it's when you put on a movie or a CD you really enjoy, and it transports you-that's when you know you've won the game. In The Fifth Element, for example, there's a scene we often use for tests. It shows a restaurant maitre'd looking at a calendar. When we were developing the David, we knew we were going in the right direction when we could read more of the text on the calendar. On a $300 DVD player, the scene looks fine, except it seems nothing is written on the calendar. You see lines, but that's all. By the time we were through, we could read the whole page. This helped us tell we were going in the right direction. The scene we just watched on your system, in which the heroine is being reconstructed while we watch, has a pretty unbelievable premise. But when audio and video are really right, there is such a "you are there" quality that disbelief is suspended.

WSR Reber: And this results when interference or so-called noise is done away with? And that's your goal?

Cardas: One of our goals. Another is build quality. The difference between the Carmen and David is that, in the David, we've further refined an already high-performance product by using still higher quality parts, and including more signal pathways.

Sinclair: There's a lot more we do, but these are some of the key things.

WSR Reber: So source components set the absolute limit with respect to performance?

Sinclair: Today, because we have really good source materials, we want our components to get out of the way.

Cardas: This is one of the great things about DVD. The video and audio potential is spectacular, and most movies are taking advantage of this, as you can see when the disc is released.

Sinclair: It has to make your job harder as a reviewer. In the LaserDisc era, you could say, "Good. Terrible. Okay." There's not much terrible product anymore; most discs are pretty darn good.

WSR Reber: That's true. Let's talk about the audio part. What makes a really good surround processor?

Sinclair: The same things that make a good pre-amplifier. I don't think this was accepted until we brought out the Casablanca. When we started to design Casablanca, we believed that if we accurately portrayed what was there, it would sound great whether it was for movies or music. Before that, product development usually had to do with maximizing features in a small package for a low price-reproduction accuracy and musical veracity be damned. When I would speak with people who made surround processors about wanting to listen to music, they'd say I needed a second system for music. Not only did this seem a waste of money, but I didn't have a large enough house to accommodate two really good systems. A system that accurately reproduces sound should be able to handle both music and movies. What we tried to do was build the best pre-amplifier we could, and the best digital--to-analog converters. That was our business before Theta moved into video. Theta invented the D-to-A converter as a component category. I wanted to bring this kind of quality to a surround sound processor.

WSR Reber: If we were to write out the design of a surround processor, what would be the most important aspects?

Cardas: When I first met Neil and learned about Theta, I was running my father's audio company. We took analog very seriously... I did only analog at home, and we released high quality LPs. Years later, when I talked to Neil about working for him, his biggest concern was that he thought I hated digital. The reality is that home theatre is digital, and home theatre is most of the business today. When I did do digital, I chose Theta because its D-to-A converters put the soul back into music. It was the most like analog I could find.

WSR Reber: It all has to come back to an analog output stage.

Cardas: It does come back to analog. What we've done at Theta is take that philosophy and bring it to our multichannel pre-amp processors. We understand there's a soul in music and that you have to hear it when it comes back to analog. Listeners are looking to feel the music, and you get that from the details. What you do with the power, how you shield things, how you keep things from being interfered with, analog volume control-these can like seem simple things, but most multichannel preamp processors don't do them well.

Page Number: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5