Is a dedicated transport justified?

You might be able to find a one-box player that beats your current three box combo for $500. DACs have advanced significantly at lower price points. The discontinued $120 ART DI/O beat the Theta Pro Basic II (a 15 year-old design) in my comparisons.

One other thing to consider: Theta "rewards" customer loyalty and original purchasers, i.e., Theta punishes second-hand owners by charging them higher rates for repairs and upgrades than to customers that have original proof-of-purchase.

Steve that's a bummer!! I think the load times are my biggest pet peeve with disc players. Some of them give you enough time to go in the kitchen and fix a drink before they recognize the disc..if they ever do.LOL

So far the newer Pioneer based transport units seem the fastest in load time IME. The Toshiba transports are some what crappy.The Philips are great but it seems to take some of them all day to recognize a disc...Arcam DV27 and Quad 99 CDP use the same transports(philips) . Both players sound good but are very slooowww loaders. ;-)

Gmood1,

I can corroborate AVguygeorge's observation that the Theta Data III is a bass slam monster (OTOH, PRAT it ain't got), even compared to the Data Basic II. I do not understand the underlying mechanism. In another system of mine, a Toshiba DVD player with a Toslink output has much more bass impact (and just plain sounds better) than a Pioneer CLD-704 with coax digital output, both used as transports with digital outputs fed into a Monarchy DIP SuperDrive, then S/PDIF to a EVS Millennium II DAC.

I agree the Toshiba's have great PRAT. Not sure why though.Maybe the difference you hear in your units are related by a mixture of jitter, resistance level of the digital output or the digital cable used? Or maybe all three?

Thanks to Gmood1 for a posible interpretation as to why the low end of a 3 seems to have more slam. I use Syn. Research's $1200 active rca dig. cable; going into Audiomecca dac. I only change transport, using the same cable/ dac. Both transports sit on Bright Star;(same for each) The difference is very noticable.---Yes, Theta has been good to me. My player has had 2 rebuilds Not to forget to mention, I live about 12/15 miles from them.