Carver Audio from the mid-80s

[Timbo2]

A friend of mine in high school had the original Carver Receiver. At the time Carver was really an interesting mix of both quite the marketing machine as well as some really interesting approaches to audio.

If you're a glutton for punishment below is roughly 3.5 hours of video including schematics on the second generation Carver Receiver. To me the most interesting technology was the "magnetic field amplifier" and the FM tuner section. I agree with the reviewer, the FM tuner in that receiver was absolutely amazing. With the amplifier section, you definitely make some trade-offs to get the high power. I seem to recall it didn't like low impedance speakers and we managed to trip the protection circuit on more than a few house parties.

I never cared for the "sonic holography" - even when you listened in the appropriate sweet spot it never sounded good to me. It was interesting to hear the demos coming from my current HTPC over YouTube. Unless you turned off every bit of multi-speaker DSP and ran the demo with only two speakers the sound was awful and essentially sounded like everything was out of phase.

 

[amirm]

That's my receiver! I still have it somewhere in the garage. Lightning hit and blew a ton of parts in it. I sent it in to Carver and they repaired it for free and sent me all the bad parts.

It was super lightweight yet produced copious amount of power. And yes, the FM receiver was phenomenal.

The one problem was that anytime our electric cooktop in the kitchen would cycle on and off, it would create nasty static in it. I talked to Carver and they acknowledged the problem.

 

[amirm]

Maybe I should put it on the bench and measure it!

 

[Blumlein 88]

I had this earlier version.

 

[Timbo2]

I had this earlier version.

View attachment 16971

That's the one my buddy had!

 

[Blumlein 88]

I purchased some 2nd hand Maggie MG 2 improved speakers and this receiver. I later used it on some Acoustat 2 electrostats which are tough on amps. It worked fine until I saved up some dough for a better amp. The FM tuner was really something as already noted. A FM college station across town 35 miles away had a 25 watt transmitter, and couldn't believe I was listening to them when I phoned in. I did have an external antenna. The Receiver had some pre-amp outs and I used that for a time as pre/tuner only.

 

[amirm]

I purchased some 2nd hand Maggie MG 2 improved speakers and this receiver.

My friend had Maggies and I think an 80 watt Byrston amp. I brought the carver to his house and for the first time we could hear solid bass out of them!

 

[restorer-john]

Maybe I should put it on the bench and measure it!

Make sure you thoroughly check out the amp before cranking it up. The triac controlled power supplies in those old Carvers are notorious for letting go in a big way.

 

[Timbo2]

Make sure you thoroughly check out the amp before cranking it up. The triac controlled power supplies in those old Carvers are notorious for letting go in a big way.

And from the video - be careful your instrumentation doesn't combine the two channels' grounds! I believe that also leads to loss of the magic smoke.

 

[cknepper1]

A friend of mine in high school had the original Carver Receiver. At the time Carver was really an interesting mix of both quite the marketing machine as well as some really interesting approaches to audio.

If you're a glutton for punishment below is roughly 3.5 hours of video including schematics on the second generation Carver Receiver. To me the most interesting technology was the "magnetic field amplifier" and the FM tuner section. I agree with the reviewer, the FM tuner in that receiver was absolutely amazing. With the amplifier section, you definitely make some trade-offs to get the high power. I seem to recall it didn't like low impedance speakers and we managed to trip the protection circuit on more than a few house parties.

I never cared for the "sonic holography" - even when you listened in the appropriate sweet spot it never sounded good to me. It was interesting to hear the demos coming from my current HTPC over YouTube. Unless you turned off every bit of multi-speaker DSP and ran the demo with only two speakers the sound was awful and essentially sounded like everything was out of phase.

I know this thread is old, but I can verify that the power supply design doesn’t seem to like low impedance speakers and does indeed trip the protection circuit on occasion. I have two of thebTFM-25 amps. One of them seems to trip more easily than the other. Wether it is running in stereo or mono. When I feed them through 4 ohm speakers they will randomly trip. Acoustic guitar music, rock music, classical music, jazz, anything can trip it after a sufficient amount of time. It doesn’t have to be bass heavy music either.
The amps sound great, however. They are just sensitive to low impedance loads.

 

[cknepper1]

Well O guess they just went with the more speakers are better than less speakers design. Lol. How did it sound?

 

[Maxval]

I had one of these for 10 years or so and I rocked it with a pair of AR9's with AR 10 pi's stacked on top!
I rarely triggered the protection relays, but I do recall a thermal shutdown after an extended session...
I would say this receiver handled low speaker impedances better than many others...