Carver Power Amps

Ritteri, with respect, and I'm just trying to give you some information here, you are trashing a product that you apparently know nothing about. The A-760 was rated, after considerable testing, at 380 wpc, rms, both channels driven, into 8 ohms, from 20hz to 20khz, 600 into 4 and 1150 into 2, rms under the same conditions. And the person who headed the design team and was responsible for the rating and marketing of the product is a real straight shooter. There is no basis for your assertion that it is really like a 100 watt amp.

I think your confusion stems from a simple misunderstanding or two. The first is that you seem to believe that Bob Carver had something to do with this amp. He didn't. The second misconception seems to be that the A series amps are similar in design to Bob Carver's designs. They aren't. Bob Carver's earlier amps were high voltage amps that were marketed with unrealistic power ratings. The A series Carver amps were designed after Bob Carver left the company, using the basic high current design concepts first implemented in the Lightstar II. They are robust, good amps.

Charlie ("danvetc") doesn't need and no doubt never uses the power the A760 is capable of delivering. REG recently measured his A760 putting out 175 wpc playing orchestral music at about 94 db through his Harbeth M40's, and has no doubt about the A760's ability to meet its specs.

As far as Charlie's "sound-shaping" equipment is concerned, REG recommended the Z systems digital equalizer preamp to use in eliminating room effects, and if you don't appreciate Charlie's investment in dealing with peaks and nulls created by interaction with the listening room, then I'd recommend doing a little research. For myself, I've used Stereophile test discs and a Radio Shack spl meter and find that I can get reallly accurate response from my speakers (same as Charlie's) without equalization, but my room is larger and the ceiling is much higher.

'tis true the Harbeth C7's are pretty easy to drive, but they do appreciate power, at least up to 150-200 wpc (not sure what they think of more), and the chief strengths to my thinking of the Carver A series amps are stability into real speaker loads, resulting in a flat, characterless, frequency response. But, as eldartford says above, bass performance isn't that hard.

I know two people who use the A760, Charlie, who posts above, and Robert E Greene, who writes reviews for TAS and uses the amp with his Harbeth M40's, and we know, by email, Jim Croft, who designed the amp. I don't believe for a minute that it has any deficiency in the bass. It does operate in Class H, but extensive testing versus the lower powered Class AB amps from the same family revealed no sonic differences, according to the designer. (I haven't compared it with my lower powered A series amp.)

I wonder why someone would be interested in trashing an amp that has been out of production for so many years?

Want to sell it cheap?

Ritteri, I see this is a worthless exercise. Here I am, trying to help you, and you ignore much of what I say. First off, the Carver A760 puts out 380 rms continuous wpc, with both channels driven, from 20 hz to 20khz, regardless of what you believe to be true. You have never used it or tested it, and you have no way of disputing what I just said. I said that REG, Dr. Greene, who writes reviews in TAS, measured the output with his Harbeth Monitor 40's, hardly a "limited bandwidth monitor." You might do a little research on the speakers.

You can't do what the Z sytems preamp does with diy home treatments. And your belief that "more circuits in the signal path" color the sound is just sad - audiophile nonsense.

And, btw, the RS meter is very predicatable, and after correcting for its well documented deviations, is good at plus or minus 1 db. Good enough for me, but the only point was, I don't use the Z systems, but you simply display your ignorance by criticizing someone who does.

What is very typical of this thread is the level of ignorance. Gmgood, I agree about Bemopti's long message above - I was going to respond simply "LOL." I explained above that any experience with Carver products designed by Bob Carver and marketed by Carver Corporation when he was there is irrelevant when considering the products designed amd sold after he left, from the Lightstar II through the A series amps. He didn't have anything to do with what happened after he wasn't there anymore. Is that so hard to understand?

Nevertheless, he is a capable designer, as Errivera says, and his Sunfire products are very good, even though designed with a frequency contour rather than strictly accurate.