Carver and Crown Amps

[DLSryker]

I don't see anyone on here using Carver or Crown power amps. Are they junk.... only high power, but not good sonic quality?

DLStryker

[DLSryker]

Any opinions on these amps?

Thanks

[Zero Cool]

There are some dedicated Carver fans here or there. crown amps are mostly for PA use save for the DC150/300 series which have there following but...there are many amps that are sonically better. but its a matter of taste i guess....some people like Bose too....

[djk]

This is mainly a DIY site, and not many want to copy Crown or Carver.

The Carver M1.0T (non inverting version) is very good for hi-fi or PA. You would have quite a time getting a proper transformer for it though. I would use two toroids and forget the magnetic field thing.

[effebi]

On an electronics point of view I have seen the schematics of Crowns 602, 402, 202 and the are absolutely conventional well built and similar to many renomated DIY ones. The only particular is the triple stage CFP, that many "experts" here would consider absolutely unreliable and not suitable for a series production. Then about the sound, well, I haven't listened at them (I'd love to do it) , but I do not belong to the golden hears brigade so my opinion is useless.
effebi

[indianajo]

Found diyaudio when looking for an opinion on a Carver 1.5T for sale on craigslist. Lots of noise on the internet about turnon-turnoff whump. Decided not to buy it. Reworked my dynaco ST120 with Djoffe's bias mod, much more diy. And the ST120 never whumped turning on or off, and still doesn't. Some Crown models have nice speaker and output transistor protection circuits involving microprocessors that have shown up as examples of how to do it on the protection threads. Other crowns are naked against failure. Some models of crown have shown up on the most difficult amp to repair thread.

[mosfets]

Somebody likes Crown amps:

Resurrecting a Crown DC300A

[Elbert]

In a recording studio, we had a pair of AE-1 monitors, simple bass reflex enclosures with a 8" SEAS poluprop midbass and SEAS alu-dome, relly nice speakers.

We ran them on a decent SONY integrated amplifier, can't remember which model, but not the cheapest model and more than large enough to power the AE-1's

Then we were lent a Crown studio reference amp (can't remember if it was the I or II) by a pro-audio vendor.

My first thought was "what do we need that beast for, TIG welding?"

We hooked it up, and boy did it make a difference! The sound was much tighter and better resolved.

I can't speak for the other Crown models, but that studio reference sure earned it's name!

[AMV8]

Hi
I do have some Carver pre and power amps.
The pre amps are very well built but often use the old 4173 op amps. These are slow and very poor slew rate. Later pre amps like the C2 used 5532 op amps and can be updated easily. However the 4000 pre amps have a multitude of interesting facilities and if you replace the op amps can be fun to use.
The early power amps are quasi complementary bjt designs with conventional power supplies. All later power amps use power supplies with a triac to chop up the sign wave and get the maximum possible from the transformer. It gets a lot of power from a small package but leaves no spare power for transients and it does cause a lot of high frequency interference.
Don

[Inductor]

Also look at the QSC's, I'm observing (specs) for two years now.