Carver Raven 350 Amps

erichgs,

Thanks for your reply. I would not describe the hiss as hum, but it is quite noticeable sitting even 15 feet away from the speakers with no music playing.
The Atma-Sphere are pretty much quiet compared to the Carvers.

I just tried reducing the Carver volume knob and it does reduce the hiss but it probably also reduces the overall volume too, hopefully not too much.

ozzy

10db of gain is a fairly large difference and I would think could easily account for hearing the noise coming from the input on the Carvers while not on your other amps.  LIke I mentioned before, if you pull the inputs and no longer hear the noise it is almost certainly not the amp from everything I have read.

On my Carvers I get a small amount of hum even with the input disconnected.  It goes away when I short the inputs and even when there I have to be within ~3 inches of the speaker to hear it.  This is with the amplifier volume knob at full and is the same on both amplifiers.  I also get some power supply hum from the amplifiers themselves but have to be very close to hear that as well.

@smokenjo

The hum on my Carvers is what I would consider acceptable and not caused by the amplifiers themselves.

As for how they sound, they are a little bright on the speakers I have now. I am currently using the Salk HT-MTM’s I purchased 6 years ago. Though very clean and decent with music they are intended for home theater use. I have Salk SoundScape 8’s being built right now. I have heard the SoundScape 8’s with Carver 305’s and really liked the sound. According to Bob, the 350’s are very similar sonically to the 305’s.

Additionally, I listened to the amplifiers that are in my house for several hours and on several different speakers when I was up visiting Bob and never experienced the brightness. This was computer->DAC->amps->Speakers (in the case of the ALS speakers there is an adjustable crossover as well.)

At any rate I will reserve review on how they sound until I receive my SoundScape 8’s outside of saying I sat and listened to music for 4 hours last night and enjoyed every minute of it.

Even on my current speakers the soundstage is, to me, amazing. Of course, my experience with other amplifiers in my house is fairly limited but the AVA 600r the carvers replaced does not come close in soundstage. I verified this with A/B testing both at Bob’s place and in my home.

I do not plan on running a seperate pre-amp.  Unless I really hear something I don't like, I plan to go directly from my Benchmark DAC3 to the Carver's.  I am of the thought that I got what I wanted for speakers and amplifiers I should avoid anything else impacting the sound.

I hope this answered your questions. I am still learning a lot on a daily basis.