I owned my first Carver product back in 1982 or so. It was a 200 watt receiver with amazing FM tuner and light as a feather due to voltage rail switching that increased its efficiency.
Fast forward some 35 years later and I was finally face to face with Bob Carver organized at an event by our Pacific Northwest Audiophile Society. Bob had brought a complete system for us to listen to and we spent a couple of hours doing exactly that.
I must stay, I was not prepared for Bob's personality. He was totally unassuming, humble and friendly. He wore a ship captain's hat which fit that persona a lot better than an audio engineer/legend. Nice to see no hint of arrogance or kingship.
The room for the audiophile society is the basement of a local church. It has dropped ceiling and I would say about twice as large as typical audiophile listening room when you include the adjacent spaces. This is my first time in this space so no reference for whether it sounds good or not (to society just moved back here).
Here is the system and space with and without Bob
The system consists of a Mytek DAC driven by a Mac which in turn was streaming Tidal. The output of the Mytek DAC drove a Carver pre-amp which in turn drove them tube amplifiers you see on the floor.
Most of us where there though to hear the line source speakers though. They were driven through an analog processor that had three controls, one for voices (?) and the other for tonal control.
As you see the speakers are two-way with line source drivers in front and traditional drivers on each side.
The line source drivers were developed for small bookshelf speakers for one of Bob's earlier companies by a Chinese manufacturer. Here of course a lot more were used.
On top there is another tweeter that is designed to allow the speakers to work better when the ceiling is not right above them (?).
There was also a narrow sub that was free standing but normally designed to go in between studs in wall.
The sub has an unusual third driver in between the two larger ones that works in reverse to counter vibrations from the two drivers:
Listening impressions in follow up post.
Fast forward some 35 years later and I was finally face to face with Bob Carver organized at an event by our Pacific Northwest Audiophile Society. Bob had brought a complete system for us to listen to and we spent a couple of hours doing exactly that.
I must stay, I was not prepared for Bob's personality. He was totally unassuming, humble and friendly. He wore a ship captain's hat which fit that persona a lot better than an audio engineer/legend. Nice to see no hint of arrogance or kingship.
The room for the audiophile society is the basement of a local church. It has dropped ceiling and I would say about twice as large as typical audiophile listening room when you include the adjacent spaces. This is my first time in this space so no reference for whether it sounds good or not (to society just moved back here).
Here is the system and space with and without Bob
The system consists of a Mytek DAC driven by a Mac which in turn was streaming Tidal. The output of the Mytek DAC drove a Carver pre-amp which in turn drove them tube amplifiers you see on the floor.
Most of us where there though to hear the line source speakers though. They were driven through an analog processor that had three controls, one for voices (?) and the other for tonal control.
As you see the speakers are two-way with line source drivers in front and traditional drivers on each side.
The line source drivers were developed for small bookshelf speakers for one of Bob's earlier companies by a Chinese manufacturer. Here of course a lot more were used.
On top there is another tweeter that is designed to allow the speakers to work better when the ceiling is not right above them (?).
There was also a narrow sub that was free standing but normally designed to go in between studs in wall.
The sub has an unusual third driver in between the two larger ones that works in reverse to counter vibrations from the two drivers:
Listening impressions in follow up post.