Bob Carver LLC has been purchased by Emotiva

As I indicated in another thread, I have lived in Carver country most of my life in Seattle. The name "Carver" has a very catchy iconic sound to it like Bose which is why people bow down to Carver. He started Phase Linear in 1968 then Carver in 1979. The build and construction quality of Carver components back in the 80's and 90's was absolute junk which is why his plant in Lynnwood north of Seattle had a full time staff of 200 people that dropped down to 20 people by the early 90's and his stock dropped to .30 cents a share. Us Northwesterner's wouldn't waste our spit on Carver. Fool's gold. Emotiva buying Carver is perfect. Chinese junk buy's American crap.

So one has to wait forty years to get a decent product from Bob Carver? I bought a Carver system in 1989 from Magnolia Hi-Fi in Seattle. Within six months the detent ring in the volume knob jammed and locked up in the Preamp and the Carver CD player quit playing and skipped constantly. By the end of the first year of ownership I had the components serviced three times due to breakdown. I sold the entire system and never looked back. The best product Carver made was the Silver Seven amp. I could care less about Bob's current company. And Emotiva? Looks like component rack gear you would find in a Korean disco. Parasound is a much better option than Emotiva.

Lack of audio knowledge? Baloney. Bob Carver made his career on glorified hype with his magnetic field amp which was nothing more than a large modified block transformer. Sonic Holography? More hype. Nothing more than a phase delay circuit to create a dimensional ambiance effect. Hell, the BBE processor's do the same thing only much better. I used a BBE processor in my system in the 90's and the sonic results was superior to Carver. Carver's marketing campaign in the 80's was overkill. His ads and ad copy were so cleverly written that it came across as the most advanced products on the market. The ongoing problems with the construction quality of his components was not short term but was on going for over ten years. Magnolia repair department in the 90's informed me that Carver separates were coming in every month for repair and they had a helluva time keeping up with the volume. I will admit that Bob's Amazing Loudspeaker in 1986 was a damn good speaker. I heard a pair in a small auditorium in the 80's hooked up to a pair of 500 watt mono-blocks. Blew me away. As low priced as Emotiva product's are, their construction quality is better that the Carver junk from the 80's and 90's. Carver went out of business because Audiophiles got wise and found better results from that time period with products from Threshold, Adcom and Parasound. So now that Bob Carver is approaching 70 years of age he finally wised up and is making good product's? No thanks. I'd rather wait for Haley's Comet.

Who cares about his new amps. Bob Carver made his living as a flim flam man during the past forty years. I can't believe that he is referred to as a legend. Yeah, right..a legend in his own mind. And what has Bob provided to the Audio industry in all those years to be deemed a "Legend"?,
nothing. During the 70's Engineers such as Demian Martin, Nelson Pass, John Curl and John Ulrick were light years ahead of Bobby C. and were designing and producing audio components that were far superior to anything Bobby C. was putting out at that time.

24h365..Your full of crap. As I already stated, Sunfire emerged during the lawsuit between Bob and Jim Kropf in Federal Court in Seattle since Bob was not allowed to use the Carver trademarked name until the trial was over due to litigation. The trial went on for years. Having lived in the Seattle area since Bob founded Phase Linear in 1968 keeps us Audiophiles in Washington State on the inside track with Bob since we grew up with him here in the Northwest.

One track mind? No way. I was harsh on Bob's current tube amps that appears to be a very good quality product. But here are the objective historical facts on Bob's company back in the 80's and 90's in Lynnwood, WA. I was a former member of the Washington Audio Society back in the 90's and Bob attended a couple of our monthly meetings on Mercer Island. At the time, the only good reliable products he was making were his tube amps which were made in house at the factory in Lynnwood. By 1990 all his solid state products were manufactured in Asia. I knew many Audiophiles at the time that were pissed at his solid state pieces since they had the same problems as I did. On going defect problems with his solid state manufacturing. I am not exaggerating at all at the number of Carver solid state pieces that came into repair at Magnolia Hi-Fi every month. Any reputable business man would not allow these problems to go on continuously for ten years as Carver did which was disrespectful to Audiophiles and would have made adjustments to correct those problems which is why Carver sales tanked and the company went out of business and Bob moved his operations to Issaquah, WA. and started Sunfire. Other companies from that time period such as ATI, SAE, Luxman, Accuphase and McIntosh had much better quality products. As far as tube amps, I'll take a used Conrad-Johnson over Carver any day of the week.

Dracule1..for the record, you state "In the end Bob did not have control over the bean counter's who wanted to maximize profits" is completely false. Heres the facts. Bob Carver went into equal partnership in the 90's with Jim Kropf, co-founder and owner of Definitive Audio in Seattle. Several years into the partnership Jim attempted to kick Bob out of Carver due to a failing company claiming he owned the patent rights to the schematics of the Lightstar amplifier and owned the Carver trademark. Bob filed a lawsuit in Federal court against Jim and was not allowed to use the Carver name for several years until the case was over so he used the name Sunfire instead. Bob won the lawsuit and was awarded back the Carver name and the Lightstar patents. It had nothing to do with bean counters, just poor business choices that Bob made which resulted in a business war with his partner Jim Kropf.