We began with a DSD file of Henry Mancini’s “Theme from The Pink Panther,” which…
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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. This time, from Alma Music & Audio, it was the Wilson Audio TuneTot ($9800/pair), the entry-level loudspeaker from Wilson, which I was hearing for the first time. Although engineered to perform optimally when placed near boundaries (e.g. on bookshelves or close to walls), here it sounded exceptionally fine sitting out in the open on unidentified stands.
After Emiko Carlin of T.H.E. Show basically ordered me to check out AirHush’s display at T.H.E. Show, I spent a few minutes speaking with company CCO Michael Quinby. It turns out that the company’s mass-loaded vinyl ISAT (Inflatable Sound Attenuation Technology) systems, initially designed for Pro applications and large recording environments, were being used in the Brooks Berdan room to reduce interactions with the hotel’s sonically dreadful air wall partitions. Some audiophiles use them for noise isolation in condos, especially when they want to turn up the volume on their high-end rigs…
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.
Even with mbl’s second smallest speaker, the 120 Radialstrahler hybrid ($21,400/pair), placed closer to the sidewalls than optimal, this Noble line system sounded great. Timbres were lovely and balance from top to bottom was ideal on an out-take…
See the smiling woman in this photo with a dazed-amidst-all-these-rooms yours truly? Meet T.H.E. Show’s fabulous Director of Social Media and Marketing, Emiko Carlin, a former classical pianist and musician whose 3000 songs include some #1 pop singles. I don’t know how this dazzling woman comes across to others, but for me, discovering Ms. Carlin was like meeting an old friend.
Clearly Carlin has many friends. While I don’t know how many show attendees arrived due to her heavy social media campaigning, I do know that virtually every younger person to whom I posed the question, “How did…
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.
Mike Moffat: I've been an…
Harley: Your processors have a characteristic sound—apparently reflecting your sonic priorities. How does a designer translate to circuit design what he thinks the product should sound like?
Moffat: That's a complex question. For the tonal aspects, the [digital] filter's frequency-domain performance must be accurate. But there are other factors. The longer I stay in [digital processor design], the more I realize how much I don't know.
For example, if you have a lot of RF near the analog stages, the RF causes the analog stages to perform in a less than optimal manner. You take…
Some high-end audio companies develop reputations for having a particular "sound." This reputation develops when every product the company makes has a similar sonic flavor. These products appeal to certain customers who like the company's sound, and who therefore tend to stay with that company's products year after year. Unfortunately, such an approach can limit a manufacturer's appeal to a broader audience.
This situation has been especially true for Theta Digital, a pioneer in advancing digital playback, and one of the first US companies to market an outboard digital processor. Theta's…
The Gen.V also differs from its predecessors by having a fully discrete analog output stage. Both the output buffer and the current-to-voltage converters are discrete in the Gen.V. By comparison, the Gen.III used op-amps. (The Gen.III's output buffer was the Precision Monolithics BUF-03.) In the Gen.V, matched bipolar transistors form the direct-coupled, class-A current-to-voltage and output buffer stages.
In addition, the differential amplifier that combines the two balanced phases for single-ended output is fully discrete. In fact, there are no op-amps in the signal path. However,…
Sidebar 1: Robert Harley's System
I auditioned the Generation V with the Mark Levinson No.31 transport through the AES/EBU interface, and also with Theta's Data Basic transport via AES/EBU or Theta's optional LaserLinque optical interface. With LaserLinque on both the transport and processor, Theta's custom optical interface adds $1600 to the package price. I'll report on the musical effects of LaserLinque separately.
The Gen.V fed an Audio Research LS5 Mk.II preamp, which drove a pair of Audio Research VT150 tubed monoblocks. These drove the ribbon midrange and tweeters in the…
Shannon Dickson reviewed the Gen.V Theta in July 1995 (Vol.18 No.7):
Much has been written about the Theta DS Pro Generation V, which I still consider among the best D/A processors available. I level-matched the Muse Model Two and my Gen.V to within 0.04dB (with the help of the two remote-controlled Rowland preamps) and drove them both with, in turn, the Theta Data II, the excellent Theta Data Basic (which I like even better than the recently discontinued Data II), and the Micromega T-Drive transport.
Qualitatively, the two processors were surprisingly close. They sounded…