How can my $300 6 year old entry level Rotel sound
i just got back from a california historical radio society (CHRS) meet. my friend has been hosting the swap meet for over 10 years. great bunch of guys. i go there with my other classic hi fi friends as there are some great deals on tubes and old hi fi besides all the beautiful old radios (that i don't collect)
anyway, to get to the point. i gave my friend a sumo andromeda amplifier 2 years ago. one channel was shorted. no bad transistors, but a bad solder joint. he can fix anything.
he has a vintage radio and hi fi museum in his repair shop. i notice two hulking black boxes laying sideways on the ground. one is a theta series II universal transport and the other is a theta generation III DSPro DAC. the two pieces together must weigh over 60 pounds!
i was suprised to see ultra high end stuff in his shop filled with classic fisher, hadley, heathkit and cutom built (by him) 300B amplifiers. (he has over 2000 pieces in the museum - between radios and hi fi).
he said a guy came in with the theta equipment along with some busted audio research classic 120 amps. my friend said he hasn't tried the theta but it's mine if i want them. heck yeah!
we hooked it up, other than the transport need to close the tray after i open it (worn belt), seems to work just fine. i was stoked. my first piece of obnoxiously expensive hi fi!
i think this stuff dates to the mid 90's, right? anyway, being i have radioshack cables and no 75 ohm coax to connect the transport to the dsp processor, i went to buy some better (but still cheap by many's standards) tributaries delta cables.
the rest of my system consists of McIntosh MC60 monoblock tube amps, conrad johnson PV1 preamp (factory modded to PV2a specs) , apogee centaur minor ribbon speakers, powered B&W subwoofer and my trusty old Rotel 930AX cd player i bought back in 1997 the day i graduated college.
so, after i lugged the HEAVY theta components up to my apartment, i was ready for audio nirvana...or at least an improvment over my Rotel. not that i had a problem with the Rotel. many reviews at the time all said the mids were huge, if not slightly grainy and the highs were a little soft. i basically agree. and being i collect vintage hifi, i'm all about thick mids and rolled off highs ;-)
well, i power the thetas up and put on beck's new album (sea of changes? - can't remember). this cd sounds awesome on my rotel. loosy goosy bass, rich mids, maybe a little recessed in the soundstage.
on the theta, his voice is right in your face, which is a big improvement, BUT the highs are, well....like, really HIGH! and harsh to my ears. the mids are just not as sweet as my Rotel, which really bummed me out. i LOVE rich mids. the bass is tight as heck though.
so, here's my question. can a 1997 $300 entry level Rotel sound better than a 2 years older (approximatly) $6,000 (?) cd transport and d/a converter? sounds odd to me. but, i have never owned this kind of stuff before.
maybe this is what old super cd players sounded like and digital didn't get to sounding acceptable until the late 1990s, or something's wrong with the components, or am i nuts?
if this theta stuff is older than i thought, are they worth modding? i'd like to make it sound better because i LOVE the looks. and i'm a bit of a label whore. theta was the ultimate in my younger years. besides, why have a 10 lb cd player when you can have 60 lbs of equipment to play one CD! COOL!
see ya,
Robby
