Bob Carver tube amps

With all the available alternatives, why trust a brand that is questionable at best???

Take a look at Denis Had (of Cary fame) new inspire amps.  He makes them himself one at a time point to point wiring.  The new Inspire 300B PSE (parallel single ended) sounds outstanding at 12 W/Chan can drive most anything.

Hello,

I am driving Klipschorns with Bob Carver 350 Monoblocks.  The Khorns have Volti upgrades, so they are a bit more sensitive than stock...somewhere between 106-109 db.  The Carvers are dead quiet and sound great, to my ears, and the sound is pleasurable through all volume levels.   

The Audio Science Review has the Carver amp rated near the bottom of the SINAD performance chart, but they are the only tube amps on the chart as far as I can tell, so that's not really surprising:

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?search/40845019/&q=carver&o=relevance

I would like ASR to do some reviews of similarly priced/powered tube amps and see how they fall out C/W Carver.

Based on the ASR chart, the Benchmark AHB2 is the cleanest, most accurate amp they've tested so far, so I have been planning to purchase one to C/W the Raven monoblocks on my system to see if there is an audible difference between the best and the worst measuring amps on the ASR list.  Should be quite interesting.

@volumizer , that sounds like a great combo you have. What are the pics you posted?

Hello,

My name is Jim Clark. Bob Carver started a company of his own early this year and ask me to run it for him. I accepted and went to work. We turned the place upside down and started over fresh.

There is no-one remaining here, that is associated with a past. Its Bob Carver, myself and a team of aerospace engineers, building some great products.

Bob is enjoying his time designing circuits and spending time with his wonderful wife.

Bob’s recent tube amps have came under scrutiny for being too lightweight and having smaller output transformers relative to the power rating. This is nothing new. You older fellows remember the controversy surrounding the 9 lb. 200WPC M-400 back 35-40 years ago. Much is the same as today.

Bob designs for music, running the widely varying impedance curve of actual loudspeakers, with high voltage tube amplifiers that raise voltage in response to the actual loudspeaker load impedance. Near resonant frequencies, a speaker impedance can rise to 30 ohms or more. The load is dynamic. Bob measurers the interactions between the amplifiers and various types of speaker loads, while making music.

Designing amplifiers to reproduce sine waves into a static resistive load as commonly tested (aka drainage) is not the same application. This adds cost and weight. Many heavy, expensive amplifiers that reproduce sine waves well, while running static resistive loads, suffer terribly when reproducing music and dynamic loads.

Bob, being a physicist, designs for the actual application of designing a musical amplifier. These high voltage, high headroom designs are some of the most musical you will find. The average tube amp uses 450v of B+ voltage, while Bobs designs run at 685v B+, more than 50% higher.

In Bobs words, "they make a nice wide voltage swing with lots of headroom."

"The high voltage supply cost less to produce and sounds better driving speakers."

"The smaller transformers sound great with this high voltage design."

Don’t take our word for it, have a 30 day risk -free trial in your system with no re-stocking fee. Hearing is believing.

Bobs lightweight, high voltage, high headroom designs, outsold other brands in more than 500 dealers across the USA for many years, during actual listening test, head to head with other more expensive, heavier amplifiers. Today, you can have the demo in your home for 30 days and you be the judge. That’s the real test of a musical audio products value to the customer.

Bob is back and we are doing well. Customers are taking the Carver Amplifier Challenge and enjoying the musical performance. We continue to earn our place in customers systems. No hype. Head to head competition.

The customers aways win in these challenges . They are the priority.