Carver PT-2400 Dual Mono Vintage Amplifier Review

[lordhumungous]

I'll have to admit i was a sucker a long time ago for Carver power.

 

[JeffS7444]

I voted "fine", considering that it's from 35 years ago. As I recall, pretty much everything else was Class AB, and you were lucky if you had 100 watts/channel. Oh how I once dreamed of owning a Carver cube!

 

[NTTY]

Nice to see a vintage amp on home page
Thanks for the review Amir!

 

[shuppatsu]

Is anyone here going to argue that the distortion of the relic isn't sufficient to produce an audible difference versus current ultra-low distortion amplifiers? I hope not.

Its distortion, particularly its high level of high-order harmonics will render it a pretty nasty listen.

Of course I would. Back in the Audio Critic days, Peter Aczel and Tom Nousaine were adamant that volume-matched amps under 1% THD were transparent, and they had plenty of studies backing them up. I've seen little to the contrary since then. I know some positive distinctions have been reported on. Amir linked one a while ago, but I couldn't find it. If I recall the result was explainable by something other than THD.

At any rate, I'm not nearly as doctrinaire as Aczel and Nousaine on this issue. I find it entirely plausible that some rare individuals can distinguish well under 1% THD.

But this isn't 1%. It's not even 0.1%. It's 0.03%, albeit with lots of higher order harmonics. Is that audible to someone, somewhere? Maybe. Is it audible to you or me? Me, certainly not. You, *almost* certainly not. If we *could* distinguish, would it matter at all? Only in our minds.

Of course, all things being equal I wouldn't want an amp where I could distinguish it from a higher-performing amp either. Not when there's so many amazing performing amps at great prices. But things are rarely equal. This thing pulls 700 watts, something which I don't need and thus would never pay for. But if I *did* need 700 watts, I would not let 70 SINAD stand in the way. Things like cost, reliability, looks, and power consumption would be far more relevant. Oh, and the fan, which is not counted as part of S/N ratio but probably should be.

 

[AndreaT]

Verona 1988, November, a missed connection forced me into a two hour wait and a stroll in the vicinity of the train station. There was a Stereo equipment store nearby with Carver amps, a confusing brochure that explained the high current design, and price tags that made unaffordable for a new grad to even think about buying them. Maybe one day. A few decades later I could easily buy one, but wait…at half the 1991 price I have an Hypex Nilai, and eighty five thousand FLAC music files on my Weiss MAN-301. Yes, it is a great time for music systems. Thank you Amir for triggering a trip down Memory Lane. The past was not (always) better.

 

[Chrispy]

For a 35 year old amp seems fine. Altho some of the prices on some Carver gear can be a bit high now but there are a coupla places still refurbing Carver gear (Hi-Tech up in Vancouver WA and Nelion Audio out in Michigan, both having ex-Carver techs at the helm afaik). My Carver stuff has stood up well enough against time for the most part.....no complaints. Interesting to see a bench test now, tho.

 

[RKV1]

Torin Krell said:

As not all amps of this sort have an anticlipping circuit I wish that feature would have also been included in your testing - especially since I believe that Carver's use of an anticlipping circuit may have been involved in some threatened or actual legal action from McIntosh.

McIntosh actually did sue Carver for their use of the anticlipping circuit. Carver won, better lawyers, I assume.

 

[Chrispy]

Torin Krell said:

McIntosh actually did sue Carver for their use of the anticlipping circuit. Carver won, better lawyers, I assume.

Or it wasn't that unique....

 

[Waxx]

It's nothing more than it claims, a 35 years old pro audio subwoofer amplifier, worn a bit, and old outdated tech, but very effective for it's original duty, still today. But i would not use it for hifi today. Carver made good hifi amps for it's time, but this was not that, not intended and not in execution. In that it's a lot like the old Crest x001 series amps, that were also not low noise, but exellent pro audio subamps that delivered millions of times in the real world.

But Powersoft (modern class D) blew those away, today that is the amp system (if used right) to drive pro audio subs.

 

[DWPress]

I lusted after one of these as well back in the day and owned a few (lesser) Carver amps but before I went with classD amps for my active 3-way XO + 2subs I was using 3 of these NAD 2200 which I sold off to a fellow ASR member shortly after Amir measured it.

 

[TonyJZX]

the question i have is that is there a stereo class D power amp for sale that has 750w x 2 and is less than 50lb and less than $2,4k?

tbf 750w is insane... like realistically for people here what are you doing with 750w that cant be done with 250w given every has reasonably efficient spks

 

[welwynnick]

Thanks for the test, Amir.

It seems disappointing, until you go back a month to the test of the Onkyo TX-RZ30, which makes you wonder how much progress there's been:

 

[Gorgonzola]

Of course I would. Back in the Audio Critic days, Peter Aczel and Tom Nousaine were adamant that volume-matched amps under 1% THD were transparent, and they had plenty of studies backing them up. I've seen little to the contrary since then. I know some positive distinctions have been reported on. Amir linked one a while ago, but I couldn't find it. If I recall the result was explainable by something other than THD.

At any rate, I'm not nearly as doctrinaire as Aczel and Nousaine on this issue. I find it entirely plausible that some rare individuals can distinguish well under 1% THD.

But this isn't 1%. It's not even 0.1%. It's 0.03%, albeit with lots of higher order harmonics. Is that audible to someone, somewhere? Maybe. Is it audible to you or me? Me, certainly not. You, *almost* certainly not. If we *could* distinguish, would it matter at all? Only in our minds.
...

I certainly don't want to get in to a heated or extended debate on this topic but I'll offer a few comments based on my personal 55+ years of experience as an audiophile.

I read Audio Critic back in the day and it had my personal respect over all other audiophile publications. My respect for Peter Aczel has only increased over the years. Notwithstanding that I don't necessarily accept the blanket 1% inaudibility threshold. If I had a personal benchmark for audability I would go with -115 dB clearly exceeded by the Carver.

In case or the Carver PT-2400 we can clearly see a veritable "forest" of harmonic distortion spikes as high as approx. -78 dB. Unprovable by me to be sure but I assert this amp will sound raunchy compared with current, ultra-low distortion amps ... that is, to the critical & unbiased listener. "Unbiased" does NOT apply to the "all amplifiers sound the same" cultists here at ASR.

 

[PirateQuinn]

This measures worse than a mid 90s Harman AVR I have. I can't imagine paying Carver bucks for this level of performance.

 

[shuppatsu]

I certainly don't want to get in to a heated or extended debate on this topic but I'll offer a few comments based on my personal 55+ years of experience as an audiophile.

I read Audio Critic back in the day and it had my personal respect over all other audiophile publications. My respect for Peter Aczel has only increased over the years. Notwithstanding that I don't necessarily accept the blanket 1% inaudibility threshold. If I had a personal benchmark for audability I would go with -115 dB clearly exceeded by the Carver.

In case or the Carver PT-2400 we can clearly see a veritable "forest" of harmonic distortion spikes as high as approx. -78 dB. Unprovable by me to be sure but I assert this amp will sound raunchy compared with current, ultra-low distortion amps ... that is, to the critical & unbiased listener. "Unbiased" does NOT apply to the "all amplifiers sound the same" cultists here at ASR.

Many people here (including Amirm IRC) use -115-120dB as the hard, incontestable cutoff for audibility. Lots of discussion about it here. There's a lot of things going for that. It's impossible to reduce all the messy empirical literature into one specific number. And the empirical literature is indeed very messy, due to how difficult it is to really lock down the methodology. If we take the far end limit, all those issues fall away. And since 115-120 can be done with $100 devices these days, why descend into quibble and cant? Plus, this way we can dispense with the very real but difficult to reduce issues with audibility of low- vs. high-order distortion.

My brain doesn't work that way, but I think that's a totally defensible position, and I totally respect a person who sets 115dB as their personal criteria for what they expect their amplifier to do. But many people overinterpret that cutoff. Just as 115dB is defensible, so is 1% THD. Any audible differences between the two are going to be extremely subtle. And this amp has 30x less distortion than 1%. High-order distortion or not, it's not going to sound "pretty nasty." It's going to sound great.

 

[beagleman]

Is anyone here going to argue that the distortion of the relic isn't sufficient to produce an audible difference versus current ultra-low distortion amplifiers? I hope not.

Its distortion, particularly its high level of high-order harmonics will render it a pretty nasty listen.

If you are talking PURE SINE WAVE test tones, maybe.

If you are talking "musical content" very unlikely.

 

[martin900]

Been told these are a nightmare to repair.

 

[Cogito]

I certainly don't want to get in to a heated or extended debate on this topic but I'll offer a few comments based on my personal 55+ years of experience as an audiophile.

I read Audio Critic back in the day and it had my personal respect over all other audiophile publications. My respect for Peter Aczel has only increased over the years. Notwithstanding that I don't necessarily accept the blanket 1% inaudibility threshold. If I had a personal benchmark for audability I would go with -115 dB clearly exceeded by the Carver.

In case or the Carver PT-2400 we can clearly see a veritable "forest" of harmonic distortion spikes as high as approx. -78 dB. Unprovable by me to be sure but I assert this amp will sound raunchy compared with current, ultra-low distortion amps ... that is, to the critical & unbiased listener. "Unbiased" does NOT apply to the "all amplifiers sound the same" cultists here at ASR.

1% is no worse than what's typically produced by loudspeakers and the rooms they are placed in. Also, the louder you go, the speaker distortion tends to increase dramatically.

 

[Gorgonzola]

Its distortion, particularly its high level of high-order harmonics will render it a pretty nasty listen.

If you are talking PURE SINE WAVE test tones, maybe.

If you are talking "musical content" very unlikely.

Well personally I wouldn't risk it ... even if I needed 750 wpc.

 

[RKV1]

Been told these are a nightmare to repair.

I never worked on a PT-2400 but the early M400's certainly were a PIA to service. Carver modified the later versions so you could actually access the under side of the driver PCB's.