Do I need BOTH amp and pre to be sonic holography?


I have Carver TFM 35 amp and C6 pre. I was considering replacing Carver pre with McIntosh C35 pre. Would I still have the sonic holography with just the Carver amp, and any thoughts as to whether this might be a worthwhile change/upgrade? (I'm not concerned with a tuner at this point.)
countvan

Showing 2 responses by larryi

The delay that Carver's holography unit developed was not just to somewhat counteract the signal from the opposite speaker, it also accounted for diffraction caused by the listener's head. When sound from the left speaker hits the listener's head, the head itself causes the soundwave to travel around the head from the left side to the rigt side, again on a delayed basis. The Carver circuit compensates for this as someone described above (delayed, inverse phase signal sent to the right speaker).

I have (somewhere in a closet) a holography generator. It does create, with most recordings, an extremely wide soundstage, with some images sounding like they are completely to the side and quite close to the listener's head. The sound is quite phasey and not entirely realistic (though fascinating).

There are recordings that were made with these compensating signals built into the recording in order to throw images way outside the speaker. Roger Water's "Amused to Death" is an example. A less extreme (more subtle) use can be found on a Nouvelle Vague "Nouvelle Vague" recording (French girl group doing terrific covers on Brit pop/rock). If you want a rough idea of what the Carver circuit can do, get the Roger Water recording.
It most certainly worked as claimed, and sonic holography is a good description of the effect-images appeared to be placed around the whole front hemisphere, and some images seemed to be startlingly close up (VERY three dimensional).

But, the effects seemed artificial and exaggerated. There was also a phasey quality to the sound. I also did not like the tonal changes--upper bass seemed to be overly prominent.