Aaaah, the advancement of Home Theater, and the slow demise of two-channel. But, alas, I still listen two-channel, about 65% of the time, and multi-channel about 35%. The CAL Delta was a great transport, but has had its crown shakened by LaserDisc players. Heresy, you say - but the challenge was bested by a Pioneer CLD-79 as a transport hooked up to a Theta Chroma 396. The Pioneer CLD-79 had (gasp) better soundstage, spaciousness, AND DEFINITION or is it resolution ??? And my old Philips CDV-400 was a pretty close third. I know both units (CDV-400 and CLD-79 had lots of Theta influence, and admirably so). I also used a AA DDE v1.1 with PS-1 upgrade, and a B&K AVP-1030 (I didn't mention this in my B&K review, but after a while, you'll figure out why B&K has a low S/N ratio and low headroom - it's got a bit of upper-end grain, and somewhat discernible dryness.) Anyway SGHT recommended AAA LD component, and rightfully so. I haven't compared the video against a CLD-99, (that's the only difference), but so far, SOOOOO GOOOD. A four star is proper.

slow to cue

I got an excellent deal on this because I "knew someone in the biz".
This is an excellent piece. It sounds great I've never had any trouble with it. I think it has a very mellow sound but not lacking in anything. Things like kick drums are softer sounding and not as snappy as my other cd players, but still very good. Video is great. Laser disk pictures are barely second to dvd and so is the sound.
I think it's a great player/transport. If you didn't know, Theta uses Pioneer as a base for their transports.
My only complaint is it's noisy when loading and it is slow to cue up discs. I'm trying to decide if I should move out of LD and expand into DVD more but it's such a great looking and sounding piece that it'll be very hard to get rid of it if I decide to go that way.