I've been buying and selling '80s & '90s stereo equipment for over ten years and I have to say that this amplifier is truely amazing! It just belts out the music with an astonashing amount of depth and clarity unlike any other amplifier I've heard before. Not only is the sound so incredibly life like and full of emotion, it just keeps going louder and louder until I fear my klipsch forte 2s are going to go up into a puff of smoke! I was running a Parasound 2200 Mkii before this one and it sounds dead, flat in comparison. Sure the Parasound has a ton of power and lots of bass but the midrange and treble are lacking horribly next to the carver. The bass response on the carver is just as good if not better then the Parasound as well. Other notable amplifiers I've owned; Acurus 200x3, Acurus A200, Adcom 5800, Adcom 555 Mkii, Carver TFM-55, TFM-42, Yamaha M-85, M-80 just to name few and the A-760x easily blows them all away.

I'm sure there's a lot of audiophile snobs out there that wouldn't give this amp the time of day and I say good for them. If you're a budget audio enthusiast like me and don't have thousands to spend on an amplifier, this amp is awesome. Especially since they've been showing up lately for around $500. These were made in '97 so if you can find one that hasn't been abused you should be able to get upwards of another 10 years out of it before anything needs to be done to it.

Honestly I would give this a 6 star out of 5 if I could-- well worth the $500 I paid. I've already spent countless hours relistening to my music collection again. This amp has put warmth and emotion back into my system that has been missing for quite some time now.

Good clear sound. Enourmous power. Nice pot meters. Gain control.

Did run too hot some times when pushed hard for more 30 minutes

Fantastic performance for its price, but did run hot and turn off every time I threw a party. Had to wait a little and then turn it on again, and then watch the volume a little so it would not happen again.

Similar Products Used:

Sunfire Signature, Parasound 3500, Vincent 991, NAD 218

Revealing of source

Revealing of source

The Carver is driving Martin Logan Monolith III panels mounted in CLS IIz frames. A active crossover gives then 120 kHZ and above, bellow that to a Rotel 985 THX and Vaf DCX{vaf.com.au}.Before the Carver a Krell 300i in thouput mode was providing a sweet but slighty thin sound.If you could call 150W-8 ohmn [300W-4 ohmn] thin! The Carver revealed layers of sound that were only hinted at before.On City of Angles HDCD soundtrack Sarah McLachlan literaly breathes life into this recording.The reissue of Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" bounces the needles up to 180 and beyond,But what a sound!!I have found the synergy of the A-760X and power hungery Martin Logans well matched.When driven by Arcam Alpha 8SE HDCD and Audible Illusions Modulus 3; BLISS.Considering the price diference of the loverly baby Krell [About half asmuch again].Five stars baby!!

Exonorates an unjustly villified nameplate.

Yellow audio journalism helped nail the coffin shut on the Mfr. (Even the imperfect early stuff didn't sound BAD, it just unnerved those pompous jackasses.)

You can already tell I'm a Carver enthusiast but this stuff really has historically always delivered more than it's price tag should've had the hubris to dare to. The truth is every time somebody,fearing for advertising revenue, backpedaled from listening based conclusions, Bob(or his hired guns,if only to throw off those that had personal vendettas against him) just went to the drawing board and started engineering them into silence. The only problem was it was a war of attrition.
To quote "Moses"(different movie though) "Damn you all to HELL!"(Professional audio reviewers that is). What does this have to do with the A-760? Plenty. It, along with the Lightstar gear, was part of the last, best generation of stuff and shares engineering DNA (if you will) with each other. A fair price at it's original $1500 Retail and stupid good at $800. Sold to dealers at that mark in a last ditch effort to stop the hemorraging. How do I know? I phoned the company and talked to what had to be the last two or three guys there as they were preparing their parachutes. Hope it was a soft landing. (Probably at Everette audio.)
One day I watched a friend's son bring over some overpriced detailless nightmare of a car subwoofer driver mounted in a home enclosure that was being elevated to "world beater" status by hordes of conceited deaf "megapuppies" and was told that "No amp can make this sub reach the endpoints of it's excursion." We put on Fennell's Trittico and the very first noise the thing made was that metallic "SPAAAACK" noise that I spend my life trying not to hear. Way too quick and transient to be clipping brothers and sisters. 160 amp mosfets will do that. Along with 120,000u + of Capacitors. I guess maybe Bob did learn a little something from those silver seven designs. If you see one for around my money BUY IT. If you don't like it e-mail me and I'LL buy it. I've been kicking my own butt for not buying 3 in '98.

Similar Products Used:

Krell, AR, C-J, Boulder

I already reviewed this product, but since have noticed something worth mentioning. Inside the amp there are two P.C. mounted potentiometers (one for each channel) that darn near touch the inside of the top cover. I could see someone accidentally recalibrating their amp by wiping it with a terry towel or something. Also, the level controls on the back of the amp are cheap, hanging from a P.C. board(otherwise unattached), have no knobs, have no calibration markings. 99% useless!!! Why put these on at all? Everything else on this amp looks and feels solid. These take away more than they add to this amp. I'm still VERY VERY happy with the sound of this amp, though!!! Well balanced, really good bass, clear, even somewhat detailed. Still would rate it a five, considering the amp's cost and the sound it delivers.

My Carver A-760X has been around now for about a year. It faithfully drivesthe NHT 3.3 mains in my home theater. The split between music and TV is about 50-50. The combination of outboard amp and speakers is very satisfactory.
One of these days I will replace the Yamaha RX-870 receiver with 2095 model.
Other people have correctly commented on the NHT 3.3's un-colored, precise
reproduction of everything you throw at them, good or bad. The A-760X
provides the speakers with ample power at all times. Bass is just great.
It pleases me greatly that, unlike other amps, the A-760 never gets hot,
luke warm is as warm as it ever gets. A quality component!

I have had Bedini amps, Quad amps, a Melos is on its way, i have had B & K, but the most revealing amp has been the most difficult.I have had several amps driving my CLS IIa. The 760x was very difficult to sound correct with these speakers. the final solutions have been to use high quality pure silver interconnects and (more importantly) solid silver speaker wires. I used it with double pairs of Audioquest Crystal II cables, but the upper mid was still too 'confused' during complex orchastrial passages (sorry about the spelling). the silver speaker cables allowed the amp to pass its signal to the most (ok, one of the more) difficult speakers made, and please no flames, it sounds incredible. the output devices have calmed down, the signal gets to the speakers and has depth, extension beyond the speakers and is top drawer. If you can afford this amp, buy it. but be prepared to hear all the other problems in your system. this is a real 'you get out of it what you put into it' product. Dont even consider it if you cannot afford good up-front equipment. this amp will drill holes in your head if you do not feed it good signals!

But, with the right stuff, it is revealing, pure, clear to a fault, more current than you will ever need (although the CLS will drive it to clip), but for most applications where you can afford good cables and source, its great.


loren

just my 2 cents

I have had my Carver Amazing Louspeaker for over 10 years and have driven them with Yamaha M2, M80, and now a Carver A-760X. The latter is by far the best sounding amplifier for this speaker among the three. Even my wife, who is usally most disinterested in audio equipment, noticed the difference. The bass is fuller and the high end is more open. A definite improvement! It is almost as if I had bought a set of new speakers. Let's hope that it will be reliable.

The Carver A-760X is a perfect match for my Carver ALS-III+ loudspeakers. Even though the speakers are power hogs, I can run them all day and the amp barely gets above room temperature. Very well built and well designed. I picked up mine for $720, and it is an incredible deal at that price.

powerful, clean, solid soundstage

none yet

I finally got around to replacing my Parasound 1000A for driving my Legacy Classic speakers. Thought the extra power would be helpful. It was. I got more tuneful bass with little or no boom, but in addition the highs seemed more extended than before and the overall sound was cleaned up. At first I thought it might be just a little thinner, then I realized that an extra layer of something (not music) was missing. I also got rid of a hum. Too bad about the hum, because it (Parasound) is a very decent sounding amplifier all in all. I generally think that the speakers are mainly responsible for the sound stage, and I still think that, however the Carver has made subtle improvements to both the size (width and depth) and, more important to me, the solidity of it (soundstage). No more wondering musicians. As you can tell I am very happy with this amp. Are there better? Probably. But for the price that this unit is available on the used market and the power it has, don't see how you could do any better. I have not owned this amp for very long, so I am hesitant to write this report, but I am so pleased, I just wanted to share. I wish there was a way to come back and revise at a later date if I find problems. I am concerned about maintenance as I am pretty sure that Carver is no longer making amps for personal audio use.

Similar Products Used:

CJ, Parasound