Theta GenVa Upgrade

Hifigy: What do you mean by "transport sensitive" with regard to the Digital Lens? This sounds interesting. As to the Lazer Linque, I'd love to try it and my brother has a Theta IIIa with that input. He also has the cable but neither one of us has a transport with that output and I certainly don't want to send mine back to Theta for an $800 upgrade. We live in central Florida which has lots of people (too many) and lots of audiophiles so maybe we can find one to try out.

I used the laser linque from my Data IIIa and it was excellent. When I wanted to go to the Sigtech DSP I found when I added the Digital Lens with Orchid interconnects the sound fairly equivalent, especially after I used 80 lbs of lead shot to absorbe the vibrations on the Data III's coverings! That said, no two Digital Lens units are exactly the same and I've had my hands on four! What finally caused me to move on was the flip side of the excellent bass from the audio output of the Gen Va, that is when going directly into my tube monoblocks there was a slight but noticable "transistor" sound. The Platinum balanced outputs have no analog (audio) stage and do not have that signature. The dCs units also don't have it. Also the Platinum and dCs have to my ears more musical D to A conversion. The Digital Lens slightly degrades the qualityof the sound with these units. Don't get me wrong the Va is a great unit and I loved it but time has passed it by. I certainly wouldn't dump it immediately because it will cost a fair piece of change to get better performance. But even at used prices I would have to think twice about recommending it and I've owned Theta gear for over a decade.

With some transports the lense would make occasional pops, (static like)for such a pricey unit (new) I found this unacceptable. Genesis changed the buffer software a few times but swear that it didn't affect the sound. I tried 6 units, each sounding different and while a couple units were to die for, they had the pops I mentioned, the ones that didn't sounded made a step backward in sound quality. Tim

I had the same "pops" you referred to on some units. It seems that on some of the units the buffers could not process digitized results of the the highest level (voulume) audio signals supported by the redbook standard. The problem also varied depending on the interface used.

Re: the original post, check out the Dodson. In your price range and probably about as good as it gets save for the pricier dCS combos.