Are Carver Preamps Any Good?

"Carver offers reliable, attractive components if you don’t ask them to be the star of the show."

They will not be the star of the show in most modern well executed audiophile type systems.

They can be though when some of the features come in handy as tweaks, like the tone controls, l/r variable blend, flexible mc/mm phono stage, etc.

Mapman is right. I had a C-1 for years. Then I switched to tubes. Got a C-9 hologram generator, since I love the sound. I ran the C-1 with a 7270 McIntosh, and all kinds of Klipsch speakers, and the results were good for many years, but tubes can't be beat.

Mapman, Polk432,
My opinion was poorly expressed. Talking about “audiophile world” components sounds much too snooty and I didn’t mean to come off that way. Given my current set-up, the Carver components that I’ve heard leave something to be desired, but back in the 70’s, they were the object of lust.

That's when I owned them. One day MBL will be in the same league if I live that long. Best of luck...I think.

I"ve had a Carver C2 Preamp for many years. It's probably the more bare bones of the preamps they ever made. Very plain and simple and clean. If one preamp sounds different than another it would be because one or the other is adding something to color the sound that one person thinks is better or worse than another. Just look at the frequency response, signal to noise ratio and harmonic and intermodulation distortion specs. Carvers specs speak for themselves. A lot of tube amps sound so good because they tend to have more harmonic distortion. Makes them have a warm smooth sound. When I bought my C2, the intermodulation distortion was unmeasurable. I could hardly believe some of the negative comments being expressed here regarding Carver equipment. They are well built, as clean as it gets and what more can anyone ask for. Spend as much as you like to make yourself feel like a good "audiophile" but don't be stupid about the end results. That's all I have to say about that!