Carver Power Amps

The Parasound HCA does not have a built-in bass boost!It has a much beefier power supply, two huge torodial tranformers,and huge storage capacitors.Its bass is CLEARLY better extended,punchier,tighter, and better defined than the Carver A-760x.The top-end is also more open and extended than the Carver.I owned the Carver for years and had it repaired once by Sunfire Corp.and they said everything checked out as good as new,so the unit is not defective! Alot of amplifiers have trouble in the low frequency range,especially with sustained high level low bass material.It takes a beefy power supply with lots of current capability and lots of power supply filter capacitance to PROPERLY reproduce deep,tight,extended and accurate bass.It is hard to get a solid state amp to sound right in the top-end.Its usually a compromise between a grainy,etched quality or a dark,rolled off quality,but the bass is just as hard to get right.

Hey,
find the review of the Carver A-760x in the May 1997 issue of Secrets Of Home Theater And High Fidelity by John E.Johnson Jr.Read the last page of the review.Read about the measured output power!

I dont think its a matter of power amplifiers having a problem with low frequency reproduction, its a matter of low impedance fluctuations with lf drivers that are relatively inneficient compared to their hf counterparts. Most full range speakers have impedance dips in the lower octaves combined with low sensitivity which alot of times with an anemic amplifier will sound washed out or blurry,and/or less defined than amplifers that can truely control a hard load. Most hf drivers have very high sensitivity abilities combined with easy to drive reactive loads of a higher impedance. I dunno, I would question any amp that has a smaller power supply than my current CD player. LOL!

Danvetc: Its kind of hard for you to state if you got good lf extension or not since your using a pair of monitors with a seperate powerd sub wouldnt you say?Let alone the band-aid control RDP-1 I see you've got listed(why didnt you just invest the money spent on one of those for better monitors,amp and room treatments?Lot of money that could have been put to better sonic gains in your system if you ask me). Even so those speakers are easy loads to drive. You could get a radioshack amp to sound good with them Im sure in reality.

Typical audiophile bullshit.

Have fun, boys.

'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?