Why not horns?

Al, I was under the impression that the Carver was supposed the emulating the sound of a conrad-johnson amplifier?

I think the m4.0t was the one mirroring a CJ amp maybe?

I ran a 4.0t for a long time up until a few years back. It was definitely a unique sounding beast. I would say that it did tend to match up best with speakers that were more tube amp friendly by nature, my Maggies at the time and my Triangle Titus's. Went loud but fell flat with more difficult loads, like B&W and Dynaudio and also OHM but to a lesser extent.

Hi Unsound,

That was an emulation attempt that occurred a bit later during the 1980's, with a different Carver amplifier model, that was written up in Stereophile and therefore drew more widespread awareness. Remarkably (or perhaps not), Stereophile's writeup of Carver's effort to emulate the CJ tube amp made no mention and reflected no awareness of his earlier effort to emulate the solid state ML-2 with some of his other models.

Best regards,
-- Al

Ah, thanks for the follow Al.