Thoughts on Carver 1.0t

B

Bungles

Member
I picked up 2 Carver 1.0t amps last night that I'm gonna run at the 1000w mono setting with my kg-4's, ess amt-4's and some other speakers I have. I also picked up a CT-7 pre-amp. Got it all for $400.

My question is for the $400 range as far as amps go is this a pretty good setup? How would you guys rate these amps? This is my first set of dedicated amps. I've been running everything off of a Marantz 2275. I did notice a hiss coming out of one of them as well. I've read a little about it. Is that something I can fix on my own or would I have to send it in to be repaired?

Sorry for so many questions but I'm still a little green when it comes to this stuff.
 
The Carver amps are well designed and well built and sound very good. I have not heard one in bridge mode. You have to do some more troubleshooting on the hiss sound. If you disconnect the input to the amp do you still hear it? Run the amp in stereo mode and see if the hiss is on both channels.
 
My suggestion would be to listen then draw a conclusion of how it performs in your system.
 
dr*audio said:
The Carver amps are well designed and well built and sound very good. I have not heard one in bridge mode. You have to do some more troubleshooting on the hiss sound. If you disconnect the input to the amp do you still hear it? Run the amp in stereo mode and see if the hiss is on both channels.
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I'll do that when i get home and see if it corrects the problem.

I mainly picked these up cause I want to have something that can power some speakerlabs K-horns I'm picking up tuesday. I know the 1000w will do the job but I'm not sure how well they will pair together.
 
I sold Carver amps and one of the recurring complaints was a hiss right out of the box. The bad news is that there may be nothing to do. The good news is there may be absolutely nothing wrong with your new amp. I don'y really remeber if this applies to the 1.0t.
 
I had a 1.5t on the bench, and it was dead quiet, no hiss at all. I can't remember if I worked on a 1.0t as well, but the entire series is very similar in design, just the power differs. Ok, I just checked and I have the 1.0t service manual, so I did work on one. No hiss, I'd remember a thing like that. I was really impressed with the sound of all of these amps.
 
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1000 watts into KG4's? My ears heart just thinking about it.

I forget what I had..M-4.0T's bridged to power some hungry ohms, thought they were noisy. I think they are transparent. meaning if you have junk power in they will be noisy.
 
Something to think about- some of the KG4s are 4 ohms. Be careful running the Carver's bridged into that. I don't think they were considered real stout into low impedance loads. You may want to run one in stereo into that load. I imagine they would still produce ear bleeding in stereo. What is that...375/channel?!?! Wicked.

You could sell the one with the hiss or run a sub with it. Or biamp and run the one with the hiss on the low end. You'd have to do a little minor surgery on the KG4s for biamping. Don't know about the others.

Mike
 
I don't know why a person would ever need 1000 watts each on Speakerlab Khorns but to each their own. I have an M-1.0t that is dead quiet and it was worked on by Bob and Rita a few years back and is a great sounding amplifier considering what I gave for it. If you "do" run those amps in mono, each MUST see an 8-ohm load or you'll let the magic genie out.

Still....1000 watts on each speaker. Neither will ever be able to handle that if you ever intend on giving them some major throttle. Not to mention your ears.... But that's just me.
 
avguytx said:
... each MUST see an 8-ohm load or you'll let the magic genie out.
Click to expand...

:lmao:

avguytx said:
... I have an M-1.0t that is dead quiet and it was worked on by Bob and Rita a few years back and is a great sounding amplifier considering what I gave for it.
Click to expand...

"What I gave for it..." is exactly right. Mine is 20 years old now and has served me flawlessly in a bi-amped system ever since. Since I'm bi-amped I won't comment on hiss since I'm rolling it off after about 1kHz. Any issues I have with noise in my system can usually be attributed to old crappy interconnects which are at LEAST that old. I'm too cheap to buy new ones.
 
As mentioned earlier, I would try running one amp (the quiet one) in stereo, and compare it to the pair in bridged mode. Some amps just don't sound right in bridged mode, and can become a bit unstable-especially into more demanding loads-which should not be the case with K horn's I would think. But they just might not sound right in bridged mode, as I have found with more than several amps.
Highly sensitive speakers really need a quiet amp-never found Carvers all that quiet-I had my old M-400t rebuilt, and it was a bit quieter.
However if the hiss doesn't bother you, I wouldn't worry about it.
 
I did some speaker management and the hiss is still present at low volumes and idle. I will try running them in stereo now and see if that solves the problem. I've currently got them hooked up to some b&w matrix 3 series 2's. I haven't turned anything up much cause I don't wanna hurt the speakers. My kg-4's are 4ohm so I am very careful how much i crank them. I haven't tried them on the carvers in Mono. I think 1000w would be the end of them.
 
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just tried both amps in stereo mode and I'm still getting a hiss. I wonder if I need better cables or a filter. So you would recomend running just 1 at the 200w per channel for the k-horns? I could set the other one up with my Klipsch rf-3's in my 5.1 system.
 
did you buy these in Huntersville, NC????? There was a pair on the local Charlotte Craigslist last week.
 
The owners manual doesn't say how much "real" power the amp is into a 4-ohm load but I would imagine it close to 300 or more as it was underrated as it stood. Manual says 500wpc @ 4-ohms rated at 1kHz which doesn't mean anything to me as music isn't just a 1kHz test tone.

Again, on Khorns of ANY kind, one amp of that size is more than one would ever need. I ran a Soundcraftsmen A5002 (250wpc @ 8-ohms) on some Klipschorns I had a couple of summers ago and the amp gains were kept WAY down due to the speakers sensitivity.
 
The 1.0t is actually a honest 300 WPC amp. For some reason, the marketing guys decided to downgrade it, but actual testing has shown it to be much more than the advertised number.
 
avguytx said:
.. Manual says 500wpc @ 4-ohms rated at 1kHz which doesn't mean anything to me as music isn't just a 1kHz test tone.
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Generally it means you have to subtract a bit to get the equivalent of 20Hz-20kHz rating. How much is hard to say. The distortion ratings at which the power levels are given, if they are given, can be a helpful clue.

If the distortion levels for a 1kHz and a 20Hz to 20kHz ratings are very close, there may not be much too difference between the power ratings. However, if, for example, the 1kHz rating is given at 1% THD (or 10% THD) and the 20Hz to 20kHz rating is given at (for example) 0.01% THD, the disparity between the ratings probably is going to be fairly large.
 
Bigerik said:
The 1.0t is actually a honest 300 WPC amp. For some reason, the marketing guys decided to downgrade it, but actual testing has shown it to be much more than the advertised number.
Click to expand...

Probably for the old "our watts are better watts" thing. ;)
 
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