jfrancisd

Overall Rating
 5 of 5

Value Rating
 5 of 5

Used product for
More than 1 year

Price Paid:  $200.00 from circiut city

Summary:
I have owned this product for 7 or 8 years. It is always left on, running 24 hours a day. I have experienced none of the problems stated in the other reviews. It is attached to a NAD 214 amp. I run a cd player, a sacd player and turntable through it. I also listen to the tuner. It is quiet, efficient with no problems or concerns. It does everything asked of it. It allows the recordings to show their own character (good or bad) without adding anything to them, the goal of any component.

Strengths:
durability

Weaknesses:
none

Similar Products Used:
preamp section of a NAD 314

Price Paid:  $170.00 from e-bay

Summary:
Contrary to others experience, I have not had any problems with this unit. I bought it used on e-bay, and for the price, it would be hard to beat.

For me, the slow tuner is not a big problem as I primarily listen to only two local stations.

The remote works fine, the display is easy to read, and the unit has lots of inputs.

Strengths:
Smooth sound, nice controls, good value.

Weaknesses:
FM tuner is slow when changing stations.

Price Paid:  $259.00 from Carver on line

Summary:
Cheap junk final gasp output from gutted Carver Corp. Output cuts out randomly. As some of the previous reviewers mentioned, the tuner is close to useless. When you try to change stations, it takes so long you think it is broken. Unfortunately, it was/is all I could afford at the time and now.

Strengths:
price

Weaknesses:
horrible tuner, crap buttons/controls

Similar Products Used:
none

Price Paid:  $350.00

Summary:
While this unit is aesthetically pleasing further review show significant weaknesses. The RCA gold plated jack covers fall off. Removong the wiring shows sloppy soldering
At first this unit sounded nice and warm but over the year I owned it , it slowly deteriorated. The remote would work intermittently, and the unit would not always turn on when pressing the power button on the front of the unit.
I finally made a call out the the west coast, and Everett Electronics gave me a full geneolgy of the unit and the company history. While, they were sympathetic of my plight, (they did offer to sell me a refurbished unit for $200 in place of the old one, which is now currently a door stop) this unit was produced in CHINA and they admit it is not made very well at all!
Before anyone buys any CARVER equipment you need to find out if it was post BOB CARVER, and if it was avoid it like a social disease

Strengths:
Nice warm sound, FM had good signal rejection

Weaknesses:
Any price a retailer charges for this unit is too much!. Considering breakdown is imminent

Price Paid:  $250.00 from On consignment at Peak Audio

Summary:
It seems as thought my particular unit is not a lemon. I have had no problems with it at all, I would go so far as to say that this particular unit is quite consistant and reliable.
Upon first listening to this preamp, one doesn't immediately recognize any serious weaknesses, with the exception of the background noise. This unit is somewhat neutral, it extends from quite low bass to open highs. When I say low, I mean it covers all the fundamentals, it can reach those lower octaves, there is no doubt about that. As for the highs, with my current speakers, and I'm sure that with most quality speakers (I'm not talking about crap like Bose or JBL or even some lower rung Paradigm) the music comes across fairly open and airy. There's not much else to say about the tonal characteristics, after all, I did say it was somewhat neutral.
In keeping with the reasonably good attributes described so far, there is the reasonably good soundstage. Voices and instruments can usually be pin-pointed on a two-dimensional plane giving the music some width and height (occasionally, the soundstage extends a tiny bit beyond the two speakers, btu not very often). As for the depth, usually there isn't much, just enough to say that there is some.
You should have noticed that I use the phrases reasonably, somewhat, or fairly good. This is because the Carver CT-24 is just that, a reasonably good preamp (I'm not jumping for joy here).
This preamp lacks control, some might refer to this trait as muddiness but I wouldn't go that far. It simply doesn't control the sound as a higher quality unit should, it's not "tight".
I've used this unit with my Sony DVD player as the source, and both a Carver Cube (m400-t) and a Bryston 4B as the power amp (I'm basing this revue on the results obtained using the 4B for obvious reasons). I have no opinion on the tuner within the preamp because I don't ever use it.
Overall this is a reasonably good, inexpensive preamp. Not cheap but inexpensive. A good product for the price.

Strengths:
Affordability

Weaknesses:
Background noise, no control for sonic holography on the romote, buzzes when changing the volume with the remote, there exists leakage between inputs, there is still signal output through to the power amp when using the headphone jack, generally unattractive and overall not very exciting.

Similar Products Used:
Nothing that would be considered similar.