Curiosity Teardown: Theta Casablanca

[syzygetic]

The Theta Casablanca is a preamp / surround processor from the mid 90s. It’s still made today, albeit upgraded from what you’ll see here- those upgrades due to the extremely flexible architecture of the system itself. I’ve owned one of these in the past, bought used, implemented it, did some upgrades and repairs, and sold it off again because I’m a stereo/trifield guy and more interested in a MiniDSP in this role, from a technical perspective.

I don’t know how this Theta would measure, my old one sounded good and I’m picky, but I know it wouldn’t empirically come close to state of the art today, both because I’m sure some of the Theta is marking fluff, and the market has moved vastly onward toward transparency in DACs, now achieved at modest cost.

However, that exposure was burned into my “ideas file” as a hobbyist. My MiniDSP / Topping / Modius may measure far better, but none of them have anything like the physical trappings of the Theta. Back in the day, this was something like $11k-$18k worth of processor, so that money went into something. Thankfully, it went into something highly modular and standard, with a nice milled aluminum face, RF shields to keep neighboring components happy, and mounts and standoffs aplenty for adding gear.

TL;DR — I bought a Theta Casablanca with a broken display board for a song and I’m gutting it for the case to use on another project. I figured some here might appreciate photos of what used to pass for high end gear.

 

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The architecture, as you can see, consists of a number of cards on a common backplane. Some of these cards are just processors, with no external ports, and others are interface cards, like DACs or analog inputs.

Here’s the processor cards for surround codecs.

 

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And the various I/O cards. This Theta Casablanca was pretty basic in configuration, but that’s perfect because I’m only after the case. “Basic” here still cost probably ten grand!

The true achievement of this product is sticking to its promise. This thing has been around since 1996 on the market, and yeah, it’s old now and hasn’t been upgraded in too long, but it went from early digital processor years into today due to the company’s commitment to their upgrades and common architecture. That’s commendable, and I suspect only (if that) achievable at the costs these sold for. The world would be a better place if more things were meant to be longer term purchases, upgradeable, and then the manufacturers actually followed through on that intent, as happened here.

 

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Some isometric views of the same I/O cards.

 

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The (extremely heavy, very much testing the limits of a PCB card) power supply.

 

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The display panel. On this unit, the display was broken but everything else worked well. I’m keeping the display PCB as a template for mounting my own buttons in the future.

Also, a reveal! You can see the tinted front lens for the display has some electrical tape on it… what feature did they not implement here?!

Turns out it was just an empty place for a decal in the future, covered over under the electrical tape with sharpie!

In my previous Casablanca, these spots had other decals in them, like “Jitter Jail” and “Circle Surround” or something, so Theta did give you more light-up stuff as you upgraded.

 

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The backplane itself, where all cards plug in.

 

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And the really nice milled faceplate, which is split so you can upgrade the model designation or the button panel separately.

 

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The case is getting empty. So many different screws in use here!

 

[Deleted member 21219]

The world would be a better place if more things were meant to be longer term purchases, upgradeable, and then the manufacturers actually followed through on that intent, as happened here.

I agree. Unfortunately, we seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

Jim

 

[syzygetic]

There design of the braces and the RF shields is good. The case is quite rigid when they’re in place, everything is thicker gauge than you’d expect today, and fits together well.

 

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All done, ready for storage until my project!

 

[syzygetic]

I agree. Unfortunately, we seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

Jim

Indeed. Time will tell with the Trinnov of the world, but I haven’t seen this kind of thing trickle down as much as it needs to. At the high end of the market, modularity is clearly achievable, and then it’s more a question of follow through- will it actually be used, or will a product have the promise of upgrades but become abandonware?

At the low end of the market it’s just not seen at all. The devices are often performant, but ultimately bound for the wastebin before their time.

I’m certain there are economic pressures here, but man, I’d sure pay somewhere between these extremes for empirically good gear that has an open architecture.

 

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Some fun direct wiring going on here.

Overall, I have to say that I think the parts quality looks good. This looks like it cost a lot to make. I can’t speak for measurements or the circuits, but someone cared here.

I really wish that I’d sent my previous working Theta to Amir.

 

[fredoamigo]

If I remember correctly, the designer architect at Theta is called Dave Reich who was the founder of Classé Audio..I owned a Classe Audio DR6 preamp for many years and it was superbly built. Theta seems to be going in the same direction. It's a shame you can't send it to Amir for measurements to find out if the high end of the 90s was really SOTA.

 

[syzygetic]

If I remember correctly, the designer architect at Theta is called Dave Reich who was the founder of Classé Audio..I owned a Classe Audio DR6 preamp for many years and it was superbly built. Theta seems to be going in the same direction. It's a shame you can't send it to Amir for measurements to find out if the high end of the 90s was really SOTA.

I really do regret not sending my old one to him before I sold it back in 2018ish. Maybe one day I’ll get up the guts to mail him one of my current loudspeakers.

 

[Dougey_Jones]

If I remember correctly, the designer architect at Theta is called Dave Reich who was the founder of Classé Audio..I owned a Classe Audio DR6 preamp for many years and it was superbly built. Theta seems to be going in the same direction. It's a shame you can't send it to Amir for measurements to find out if the high end of the 90s was really SOTA.

I still own a meticulously serviced and modified Classe CAP-151 that I absolutely love. I'd send it to Amir but it weighs a lot and the topology seems like it would be limited to -90db SINAD or so, so I'm not sure what the point would be.

 

[rynberg]

Thanks for the teardown/photos, that's really cool. I remember 20 years ago thinking how cool that processor looked...some of the best of 90's "high-end".

 

[Bulldogger]

I really do regret not sending my old one to him before I sold it back in 2018ish. Maybe one day I’ll get up the guts to mail him one of my current loudspeakers.

A modern Casablanca V with Xtreme D-3 dacs has a SINAD of 103, worst case. Three Xtreme D-3 cards were measured, and I saw the results of the worst measuring one which had the 103 SINAD. The measurements were done under the same conditions as Amir measures. A CBV equipped with the Premium Dac P-3 would also have a SINAD of 103, saw those result too. ATI has the test gear Amir has.

Theta had to move to a larger case, so I don't think there is anything left in the current version from the model you have, even case changed. But Theta did give a credit to allow users to move to the large case.

 

[DSJR]

Theta did seem a good not too expensive (in their market) high end brand, the products seeming to do as claimed... Weren't the main Schiit guys involved back then (excuse any confusion here but I'm sure Jason was)?