His background may have been in tubed audio product design, but Theta Digital's Mike Moffat is now at the forefront of computer-based digital processor development. His Theta D/A processors are among a handful of products that use Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips and custom filtering software instead of off-the-shelf filter chips (footnote 1). I recently visited Mike at the Theta factory to get his current ideas on digital audio reproduction and what goes into designing a good-sounding processor. I began by asking Mike if he had always been an audiophile.

Ah, mbl. This time, making music not in its usual large room, but rather in an 11-foot wide space. Mbl North America’s Jeremy Bryan had asked for a larger exhibit room, but none was available. After hearing the havoc wrought by air wall subdividers in many of the Hilton Long Beach’s conference rooms, I think Bryan is lucky to have been refused.

Red was more than the color of my true love’s hair toward the end of T.H.E. Show Long Beach, as I moved from one winning red speaker to another.

There was a helluva lot of burnished silver jewelry in this room, and it sparkled like a sharply polished diamond.