Alternatives to Casablanca III - Page 3

You may be in the wrong forum. The law of diminishing returns is strong here. I remember a friend once purchased a large GE television from SAMs Club for at the time half the price of Panasonic's then top of the line I had just purchased. He never understood how I could justify buying the set I owned and had to constantly tell me that. I say if you are more value conscience than performance either of our opinions is of little value to the other. Seriously, the Onkyo may be just the ticket. It will do all you need for a fraction of the price of the Casablanca and you likely will find it just as good. I know for sure my friend would.

Way too much stuff in here to address tonight dude but thank you for the invite, quite kind.
I was going to try to cut this post into bullet-points and sections but we seem to be all over the place so I'll try to be as concise as possible.

It is not that I'm not curious about your results, I am more intrigued then you might imagine.
But I am inclined to believe, from your posts just prior to this thread, that there is already a bias towards the cheaper, easier, more available, etc. processor.
I thought you stated quite clearly that the Casablanca was too complicated for your needs and desire something simpler.
That of course does not mean you shouldn't try to compare....


I am having a bit of a problem with your terminology.
You have been talking about which box is or has a better DAC but then you seem to be comparing the entire box (SSP with DAC's).
It is confusing as to what it is you hope to accomplish and what exactly you're comparing to what!
At this point I don't even feel like we have a competition, let alone a fair one either way.

There is no question that this is an expensive sport to be involved in and your concerns over future costs are no doubt valid.
Again, the idea behind the Casablanca is that it is upgradeable, that does not mean you have to get every option or upgrade, or get it when it comes out.
You do these things at your leisure, when and if you can afford them.

I am quite sure your intention was not to discredit Theta as from reading your posts I understand that you have enjoyed your Casablanca a great deal and have enjoyed the sound of the Extreme DAC

If you liked the sound of your CB-III and wished to keep it, there was also another much cheaper alternative you have at the moment while you waited to do whatever upgrades you want in the future.
That is to acquire a used Six-Shooter.

Remember, the upgrades your talking about, the CB-IIIHD upgrade (which I still feel is relatively cheap) Dirac Live and an as yet unreleased DAC card are state-of-the-art components, and the options are,
1. be prepared to pay the price for State-Of-The-Art
2. wait until such things are available used
3. get a mass market SSP that you can live with.

That's because most came from other processors and not mass market. Usually there are intermediate steps. Audio guy and Edorr both have owned the Onkyo and switched either from it or to it. There are in fact years of reports of owners switching to different processors. I have only been told by three guys or seen reports that they found better sound than the Casablanca with Xtreme dacs. One purchased the 30k Krell and the other asked that his opinion not be shared but I can tell ypu his processor is well over 10k. The other reports were comparing the older Non-HD Casablanca. Everyone is telling me that the improvements with the HD are not the modest ones you might expect from the changed that were made.

I have in fact used an Onkyo,Yamaha, and Harman Kardon receivers in my system all in the last 3 years. I never though the comparison was worth making and still do not. I gave the Harman Kardon away to my wife's brother in law. It offers great performance for what it cost and he's thrilled with it. It was used in my theater when my house was up for sale.

Not true. There is a free firmware upgrade for this.

Ok HDMI 1.5 1.6,etc. It's not hardware upgradeable. You don't save any money trying to stay current with Mcintosh Vs Theta. I am a big fan of Mcintosh and own over 50k in Mac gear. I have often considered Mcintosh processors but the Casablanca because of the cost of upgrades is just a much better value.

There is also the McIntosh MX-151. This was released a week or so ago and handles 3D and a little other stuff.

The CB and the Mac are both costly and the returns do become smaller, but if you can afford such items then the returns are worth it.

It is up to each person to determine if he or she feels it is a good value. That is the main reason there are so many companies still out there in audio or any other field.

I think for many others here, it is less about value but the product's performance within reason. It's hard to imagine anyone here with a high end theater with 10s or $100,000 into it throwing in an Onkyo / Integra piece to do the sound. My buddy bought one and I helped him set it up and what a piece of crap. If this is truly your hobby and you're truly inspired to have a $20K forum level of performance, then you stay away from the mass market garbage.

You can get great surround processing with a built in PEQ from ADA, Classe' or others that does a fantastic job for well under $10,000 street.

The late great "doug Windsor" would have been all over this thread

To be fair though, I had the old Onkyo 885. According to Kal, the newer unit is quite a bit better. Based on the limited numbetr of pieces of hardware that have circulated through my system over the last three years, I would rank the DACs as follows:

1. Perfect Wave DAC MKII
2. Zodiac Gold
3. Perfect Wave DAC original version
4 / 5 Tie - Theta Xtreme in CBIII, Marantz UD9004 internal DACs (it could be the Xtreme's bests the ud9004 when installed in a CBIII HD - I don't know)
5. Pioneer BDP-09 internal DACs
6. Onkyo 885 DACs

I would be interesting to compare the DACs in my Trinnov 4 channel processor with the Perfectwave MKII, not least because the Trinnov DACs are the same DACs that are used in the 40,000 ADA SSP. I probably won't bother with such a shoot-out though.

It is (not very likely, but) conceivable the new Onkyo has closed the gap with Xtreme in a non upgraded CBIII. We can talk about this all day long, but the only way to find out is to try for yourself.

Completely agree.

Keep in mind though that the price of expensive SSPs is largely driven by sunk R&D cost, not cost of components. The marginal cost of a copy say the Trinnov software is zero, and all the digital processing happens on cheap chips. The secret sauce are the algorhitms. So a high end manufacturer could decided to market its secret souce to the mass market, cut its price 75%, and make up lost margin through higher volume. If succesfull this can change the dynamcs of the industry.

This is precisely what Oppo did with the universal player. The 93 is now close enough to a mass market product, yet performs at the level of what was previously a few thousand $$$ player. They could have elected to position their player in the high-end segment and charge a few thousand.

Don't see this scenario play out in the SSP market, but it could happen.

The Oppo 93 is 5X to 10X the cost of many many Blu Ray players that are found at Best Buy. And Oppo is direct Buy only. There is a similar differential between today's new SSPs (e.g. Classe', ADA) and your run of mill Onkyo garbage. If you want to play, you have to pay.

Now that's a first!

We were talking about a 2K Onkyo in comparison with a 10K SSP, not a $500 radioshack. The Oppo improved price performance of universal players overnight by a factor of 5 to 1. A high end SSP selling for 2K could do the same. And yes, to make money it would probably also have to be a factory direct model.

There is no such thing as a high end SSP @ $2000. We are not there yet. An Onkyo is just an amalgam of cheap parts for the mass market that is Best Buy's bread and butta!

I mean, I don't care what anyone does in their own theater.. it's their choice. But an Onkyo in a high end room?? That's like me substituting a Mustang GT for my 911 Turbo S! No thanks - 1/5th the price, 1/5th the performance!!

You are dead wrong. Most hardware is cheap, and once developed software cost nothing. Price is largely driven by sunk R&D cost. I would not be surprised at all if Classe could sell their SSP-800 in a factory direct model at a low margin for between 2-3K (provided they could manufacture say 10x more then they are selling now, which would drive down manufacturing cost per unit). Of course, they would need to sell many more units to recover their R&D cost. To sell into the high end of the market is strictly a marketing decision.

By contrast. you could not build a Porsche and sell it for 30K and make money.

You would put an Onkyo in your room?

Look what Anthem's done, they developed ARC for their $6-10k processors and then put a slightly slimmed down version in their MRX series.
I just replaced a BK Ref20 and after considerable research, decided to use the $1k MRX300 as a pre/pro. The technology just changes too quickly to invest in anything high-end, unless you go with something like the Theta that has a great history of upgradeability, albeit at a high price.

If your new to using REW here is a tutorial made up by GIK Acoustics which should help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v...UUSY&vq=medium

I have onkyo, integra, denon in my house in family room, game room , master BR etc . All are $1000+ MSRP models and none of them comes even close to ADA that I use in theater . It is true that the cost to build them is not much . Most of DAC' s cost less than 5-10 dollars , same way If you add cost of resistors , capacitors etc and the DSP's , it will probably come to few hundred dollars at the most. That would be true for all processors probably . But that doesn't mean that onkyo will sound same as other pricier processors . The premium is for their R&d and intellectual property to use the same components in a way that gives performance ad flexibility / tweakbility that sets them apart from the crowd .

A player is a far simpler device than a box that contains a preamplifier and 8 channels of amplification. Heat kills. A player simply picks up the data from the disc and simply spits it out in its native form. The Oppo analogy is a weak one when comparing to a receiver which is the heart of an audio system. Moreiver, the Oppo is expensive compared to the myriad of $100 Blu Ray players.

If your system sounds great to you with a piece from Best Buy, that's your thing. Bruzonsky thought so, too but that was because he didn't have a real SSP with HDMI. As soon as he got it, I suppose he forgot about how great the Onkyo was in his system.

I see no reason to consider an Onkyo in this forum unless for the bedroom or family room.

I have never been much for cable making a huge difference even though I do like well made cables. I have Cardas, MIT, Transparent, Harmonic Technology and a few others, I like to call them Audio Jewelry. I did try out a pair of Anti-Cables out of curiosity and it was the first time I really heard a difference in speaker cables. The difference was my speakers sounded horrible, it was very easy to hear the difference. I actually swapped out my main speakers to see if the Anti-Cables just didn't make a good match for the Aerial 9's I had at the time but they were still horrible with my Von Schweikerts. I even went so far as to swap out the cables with some generic Belden speaker cables I used for my subs and they sounded fine. I couldn't hear much difference between the cheap Belden and I think Cardas or maybe Analysis Plus cables I had then but the Anti-cables really stood out. The treble was truncated and the sound stage collapsed with the Anti-Cables, it was shocking actually.

Sorry for the off topic rant.

That is precisely the point I was trying to make. The reason to sell a high end processor for 10K and not 2-3K is because the secret sauce commands a premium. It is not to cost to build it. So some high-end manufacturer could decide to kill their dealer network and start selling direct at higher volume and at a lower margin, and change the industry. Another scenario is someone like Onkyo figures this out and builds a SSP that is as good as the high end.

Jeff, dead wrong again. The technology in a a universal player and a SSP is actually very similar. Both have a powersupply, DSP, multi channel dacs and analog output stages. There is no more amplification going on in a SSP than in a universal player. The SSP just adds switching capability.

Imagine how much I could've saved on my Porsche had they closed up all their dealerships, importers, etc and sold direct from Germany!! It's a senseless argument.

For one, I think the receiver adds heat to the circuitry in the box. And heat kills electronics. Otherwise, preamp and SSP manufacturers would add heaters in their preamps so you could get that 'hot' sound and get those circuit boards up to 100 degrees!

I guess the VW bug and my 911 are similar cars offering similar performance. 4 wheels, an engine, a chassis and key!

Do you still own thousands of dollars of high-end cables? If so I just see hypocrisy.

I do. If anything this proves my point. The only reason these cables are so expensive is R&D costs and proprietary IP, and willing buyers to pay $2000 for a piece of equipment that costs $200 (tops) to manufacture, stictly on the basis of performance. The reason to price and market them as expensive high-end cables is strictly a marketing decision.

Also, I never said the $2000 high end processor has arrived. I just said just like Oppo shook up the universal player market, someone could do the same with SSPs at some point, because the secret sauce is mostly software and the hardware components are cheap.

Not sure where the hypocrisy part comes in.