First thing you'll notice about the tungsten weights is how much…
search
The first thing I examined was the change from brass to tungsten counterweights—an upgrade which can be done easily by you. Just unscrew the old weights and screw in the new ones. But be careful when you screw in the new weights to make sure you have the screw thread seated properly—it's very easy to strip the plastic threading if you screw it in wrong. I traded my old set of brass weights in well over a year ago, so Bob Graham sent me a set of older ones so I could compare them in a tightly controlled A/B situation.
At the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show in January—see the report in this issue—Sony and Philips held an SACD Event at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. There were trippy lights. There were the Grand Pooh-Bahs of Sony, Philips, and the record labels. There was loud multichannel Big Brother and the Holding Company. And there was Sony's main SACD man in the US, David Kawakami, supplying the pep talk.
Many of us were hoping for a major announcement—the SACD format has been on the market since 1999, and CES is the big trade show of the year. Instead, we were treated to reports of incremental…
Michael Fremer also wrote about SACD in his April 2003 CES Report:
If there was an overriding theme at this year's CES in both high-end audio and mainstream consumer electronics, it was "We want higher resolution!" Despite the naysayers at Business Week and the cluelessness of the New York Times, which basically ignores the subject unless there's bad news, HDTV will succeed—especially now that the cable industry has come aboard. High-resolution audio, be it analog vinyl or SACD or DVD-Audio, also seems to be grabbing the imaginations of a healthy chunk of the mainstream audience.
…
Even to a nontechnical observer, someone without a deep grasp of the germane technical issues, the Amazing Loudspeaker should indeed prove a source of amazement. First of all, there's no box. Don't mistake the back grille for an enclosure—if you pass your hand along the Amazing's behind, you'll realize that the grille is merely a cosmetic cover; you can actually stroke the woofer magnets if you're so inclined. Yet without an enclosure or electronic trickery, this speaker boasts excellent dynamic headroom and true flat bass extension almost to 20Hz. Just think of the woodworking costs…
One of the advantages of the finite baffle is that its bass alignment is unaffected by the number of woofers used—the designer is free to use as many drivers as he pleases to keep pushing the system sensitivity higher and higher. Carver uses four woofers per side in the Platinum Edition because that's all the room there is, but I'm sure he'd have opted for more, space permitting, and of course only if the ribbon sensitivity could keep pace. The end result is a very respectable sensitivity spec of 88dB—good enough in this respect to compete with many box speakers.
The Q of the Amazing's…
Because of treble beaming, the tonal balance of the Amazing changes with listening distance. Generally, at 3m from the front baffle you'll be sitting beyond the critical distance for frequencies up to about 5kHz. To reiterate, the right choice at the listening seat is an upper-octave rolloff to ensure a natural sound balance; one that does not distort the direct/reverberant sound ratio.
It was this sort of experience that led J. Gordon Holt (footnote 2) to embrace the "Down with Flat!" philosophy in earlier issues of the magazine. It was quite puzzling at the time. Jack Hjelm from Audio…
There was lots of midrange and treble detail, and it was resolved clearly enough—commensurate with the performance level you'd expect from a fast transducer like a ribbon. So it was all the more disturbing to deal with the level of reproduction below 500Hz or so. On the one hand, you have lots of scintillating treble detail that beckons you to get involved in the music. On the other hand, the lower octaves serve to isolate you from the music. Taken as a whole, the midbass, upper bass, and lower midrange were veiled and muddy. Bass lines were consistently ill-defined and difficult to follow.…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Two-way hybrid with a ribbon operating full-range above about 100Hz, and a patented dipole bass system featuring four 12" woofers in a finite baffle loading. Nominal impedance: 6 ohms. Sensitivity: 88dB/1W/1m. Maximum SPL: 113dB symphonic music, 110dB rock music.
Dimensions: 27.5" W by 10" D by 54" H.
Price: $2195/pair in oak, $2495/pair in black (1990); no longer available (2006). Approximate number of dealers: 170.
Manufacturer: Carver Corporation, Lynnwood, WA (1991); Bob Carver currently heads up the Sunfire Corporation (2006). Web:…
Sidebar 2: Measurements
As an interested observer during much of Dick's auditioning of the Amazing, and having spent most of a weekend with Bobby the C last September (see my interview with him elsewhere in this issue), I was intrigued to get the final samples of the Amazings into my own listening room for a little measuring fun. Having just installed the DRA Labs MLSSA measuring system in my PC, I felt that this speaker would really give it a workout.
And I wasn't wrong. The Carver Amazing's impedance magnitude and electrical phase, measured with MLSSA, are shown in fig.1. The…
The Question of Bass: J. Gordon Holt
A few issues back, in Vol.9 No.3, I used "As We See It" to clarify what Stereophile writers have in mind when they use the term "transparency" in equipment reports. This time, I'll do the same thing for the performance parameters of bass reproduction.
A few issues back, in Vol.9 No.3, I used "As We See It" to clarify what Stereophile writers have in mind when they use the term "transparency" in equipment reports. This time, I'll do the same thing for the performance parameters of bass reproduction.
Perhaps more than any other aspect of system performance, LF behavior is influenced by every single component in the system, as well as by their mutual interactions. Exaggerated bass can just as readily result from acoustic feedback, or a shortage of woofer damping due to an undersized magnet, as it…