Nobody so far thats independent of Carver affiliation, is getting even 60 watts per channel. Yes they should have used a bigger power supply and maybe gotten a realistic 20 wpc. That would have been possibly a decent marketable product. But hey, if you only run one channel without half the frequencies that matter, it could be a wonderful center channel home theater amp.
For potential customers that use efficient speakers I’m sure it does sound great. Lots have attested to that. But what about the other half who have in-efficient speakers who wanted to pair them with a well selected amp? Carver knew they’d lose half the potential buyers, so they lied. Now half the people who bought them are not seeing the full potential of their sound..
I listen on average around 76-82 db in a 26 x 40-ish room with 13’ ceilings. Even at those db’s, I can easily hear the difference in a 100 watt per channel from a 200 watt per channel. I can hear the difference between one power supply and two power supplies with the same wattage. The Carvers that I almost bought, would have been a disaster.
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Honestly if I were an owner right now, a solid 60 Watts x2 would be OK with me, even at THD a point or 2 above 1%. I’d certainly be disappointed at being sold misleading/erroneous specifications, but that would be "close enough" - 60 versus 75 is still usefully powerful. 17 - 20 is another story. Hopefully we'll get more clarity soon.
I know W4S cited the PT, but I’ll be really surprised if those OPT’s push out 60 Watts x2 as recognizable music.
Anyways, my audio tech & now dealer has been Gordon Waters here in Marietta GA for many years. He’s designed speakers and restored countless vintage tube amps (including a couple of mine). I trust him implicitly. On Audiokarma he posted the following interesting analysis about the Carver 275 schematic (which to Carver’s credit was included in the manual) - no comment on the transformers, just the circuit:
I was just having a conversation with some really astute techs about the Carver 275 amp, regarding a feature I just noticed, in the schematic:
Look at resistor R53 and R44, connected to the negative speaker lead. That’s basically the same type circuit as the original Fisher 55A "Z-Matic" output-impedance adjusting circuit, just without the adjustability that Fisher provided (including the ability to turn it off, in the Fisher!). Here, it’s set to a fixed level of current feedback, reducing the damping factor. This will act to "color" the bass of most speakers- in a not-so-predictable way (each speaker has different impedance characteristics, which will interact with the network in different ways). This is ostensibly the "listening to the speaker in the room" thing that Carver was talking about, I would think. It’s funny, though, that it’s something that most experienced techs recommend REMOVING from the Fisher amps, since it’s rarely needed (unless you have very early speakers, designed for use with for amps with very low damping factors, such as 1950s JBLs, Altecs and such), and it’s rarely beneficial...
Also, more than one tech mentioned that they were struck by the myriad compensation networks needed for stability and response modification in this amp. Low-frequency shelving on the input (though switchable), HF frequency response limiting on the output of the first gain stage, LF shelving between the phase inverter and the output tubes, HF snubbing/shelving on the primaries of the output transformers, a Zobel on the output, AND a two-stage shelving network in the feedback loop itself, as well as the "output impedance modification" circuit described above. It’s rare for ANY amp to need THAT MANY different networks. Maybe two or three, tops- for example, the Eico ST70 "Hot Rod" uses three (plate-to-grid HF compensation on the phase inverter, HF snubbing/shelving on the OPT primary, and a Zobel)- but almost never SEVEN different response-modifying networks in one amp. I wonder what square wave response looks like, under normal operation, and also with each of those networks disconnected one at a time, to see exactly what each one of them is doing...
Mind you, having all those networks doesn’t necessarily mean the amp would perform badly or sound bad- but with each network added, there’s always the chance of "throwing away the baby with the bath water", in terms of sound. Every compensation network represents a compromise of some sort...
Regards,
Gordon.
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After all this dust settles, let's not forget what the late great Ken Ishiwata said,
"Unfortunately, specifications don’t tell you about sound quality. That’s not just for DACs, it’s for everything. Those specifications are all based on static measurements, but music is dynamic and there are many other parameters that influence performance."
I'll take Mr. Ishiwata's view over egghead testing alone. This guy had a dedicated listening space where he tested and tweaked products on sound quality--albeit he did care significantly about specs too.
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@jbhiller
Absolutely, I agree listening results come first. This is specifically about whether Carver needs to down-rate its amplifiers, not whether the amp deserves to exist. Likewise, it raises the question: do we have a problem in the high-end 2 channel amp industry right now? Do we need to look at other companies and how they’re rating amps? Maybe we’ve been too comfortable since the HT receiver "peak power" rating debacle in the 90s / 2000s - back then it was easy to say "haha, HT guys - not my Krell!". What about now?
I hate taking sides with the ASR guys because they’re measurement zealots and (mostly) outright anti-audiophile. The overall theme of that forum is listening tests come DEAD last - which to me, means their real hobby is measurements - not music.
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@mulveling , You make great points. I agree wholeheartedly. I didn't mean to suggest that listening excuses any of this! You also are on to something, I think, about whether there might be a problem in the market right now.
I had an NAD M22 amp that Stereophile gave a Class A, glowing rec to a few years back. It was a wonderful product and I'd recommend it. That aside, even with its hundreds upon hundred of crystal clear watts (it tested ridiculously well), it couldn't beat out a nice Creek Evo Integrated of lesser power, driving all sorts of loudspeakers. Buying on stats alone wouldn't tell me that. Why ASR's zealot faction (not all of them) refuses to listen at all is beyond me.
I've got a 9w tiny tube guitar amp that will but a big grin on a guitarist's face. It hums, has limited power, and is soooo far from state of the art. I have guys begging me for it. If you tested it you might be scared to even turn it on.
Tests have a difficult time testing and relaying information about tone, timbre, etc. Those things matter a bunch not just to how we reproduce music but how we make it in the first place.
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