Carver Pro ZR1600

I have it on good advice that Carver Pro has already tapped Stan Warren as a consultant on the matter of a stripped down audiophile version, doing away with all the ancillary circuitry, such as the junk op amps and clip limiters up front, and some more useable audio jewellery on the back, with a view to producing a great amp that does more, for less, and come in 'under the radar.' This movement is currently under way. Stay tuned.

Dmason...I hear the term "junk OP Amp" used a lot lately. What does this mean?

With the exception of noise, the open loop electrical characteristics of an OP Amp have almost no effect on how it performs in a circuit, especially for a unity gain buffer application. All that is necessary is high open loop gain and slew rate sufficient to handle the highest frequency of interest. These minimal requirements on the active amplification devices is the reason why the OP Amps circuit is so widely used in all kinds of electronic equipment.

El: Op amps have the potential for high quality sound, but most Op amps are under-designed mass produced pieces of junk. They work great for many applications, but many of them just aren't suitable for use with "hi-fi". On top of that, when put into a circuit that is an under-designed piece of junk, you end up with one BIG under-designed piece of junk.

If you would like further clarification as to why many Op-amps are "junky", try reading a very informative article written by Ben Duncan as published in Stereophile a few years back. This amassess the results obtained after testing over a dozen different Op-amps from various manufacturers. Some of the same Op-amps from different manufacturers performed VERY differently. We are talking about S/N ratios that varied by as much as 40 - 60 dB's here. Needless to say, a few dB's here and there might be understandable, but not variances as mentioned above.

As a side note, this article also mentions thermal distortions, which most IC's are not very good with. Sean
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sean...Yes, noise is a significant characteristic of an Op amp. However, the OP Amp circuit topography is such that an IC which is "junky" in other ways, like distortion (thermal or otherewise) gain tolerance, slew rate tolerance (as long as it is above some value) etc, will work just as well as an OP Amp that is perfect in these regards. Op amps can only be evaluated in context of the performance of the overall circuit in which they are used. They should never be thought of as a linear amp.

Eldartford,

Carver pro's hands are tied. They can only sell to the pro market. All this Audiophile stuff took them by suprise. Do to legal reasons they can not market to the home user BUT you can buy a pro amp for your home system if you want to!!!

You will see different products to go with the ZR seris also. I don't think that Carver Pro will be doing the mods themselves, but as you can see,are letting some of the best people in the business do the mods and sell them.

Hope this helps,

Larry