Carver Power Amps

The Carver is also a limited bandwidth amplifer too if Im correct. I doubt it could put out real world reactive loads of sustained wattage of even a quarter of its rated power.

Eventhough I did not have an A....X amp as you do, I had the older M 4.0t amps that Bob Carved had designed before being bought out by board members. It had a rated output of 375 watts per channel, but in my short audiophile experience, those were the most GUTLESS watts I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. How heavy is your amp? Mine was about 35 lbs, and to be honest, the weight to power ratio shows that there is something missing. All the amps that I have had afterwards were much heavier and subsequentialy had better bass, better everything. I unloaded my last M 4.0t about 3 years ago, on the cheap. That was the best decision I did in my whole life. Other amps I have used are PA-7 Nakamichi, Sonic Frontier Power 2 (glorious sounding, a little loose in the base department), Blue Circle BC-2 (75lbs each) nice power supply but needs somewhat flat impedance from the speaker and now I am using a DNA 225(this is one exciting and slamming amp.)

Absolute crap. One of the real performers, the Carver A-760x, is being trashed here. This amp is perfect and stable under virtually any load, for a very reasonable price. Anyone who has found a flaw in this amp has one that is not working properly, or more likely, has no idea what real music is supposed to sound like.

Or maybe you just like amps with a built in bass boost, (working like a "loudness contour,") and you don't know enough about what you hear to realize it.

Charlie

It's hard to imagine that any audio power amp would have problems in the LF range. That's the easy part. Making it work well at high audio frequencies (above 10KHz) is harder.

One flaw Ive found is their output wattage rating. They rate their output using the lame IHF dynamic power rating. Basically their telling you what it can output with a 1khz test tone for a millisecond. 380 watts at the IHF rating could very well mean that its true RMS value be at least 3-6db(1/2-3/4 less output power)or even more below its listed spec. My guess is that the amp is realistically capable of putting out about 50-100 watts of true full bandwidth power at best. And looking over its power supply and output components on some online white papers looks to confirm this. Never been a fan of ANY "Bob Carver" product myself though. I dunno, I cant do a product you see in a Cambridge Soundworks retail store that you know has a 60-65 point markup.