Greetings Allsmiles
Boa definitely knows what he's talking about: the Heritage Klipsch's are so sensitive & revealing that many listeners don't like what they're hearing only due the poor quality of signal being input! These speakers are particular: if anything upstream is amiss then you are going to hear it. OTOH their dynamics are unbeatable IMO.
Your Carver is simply not high enough quality equipment for this job. I've tested these horns with many amps (Carver included) and most of them sounded just OK; not that great. I've had excellent results with a large Luxman (mosfet) amp, great results with Accuphase (mosfet), very decent with McCormack, decent with Classe, marginal with McIntosh, awful with Adcom. It's not just the equipment quality, it's all about synergy with your hardware & cabling too. Finding the right match for everything can be difficult & time consuming, but the rewards are highly worthwhile.
Mosfet amps work best for me here; I don't care for tubes & have found that the white noise "tube-rush" of such equipment is quite objectionable with horns due to their ultra sensitivity. While I've always perferred solid state sound, YMMV of course.
However a Golden Tube Audio SEP-2 pre driving that McCormack DNA-1 Deluxe amp sounded magical.
For your CD source, due to limited experience I can only recommend what I'm using now (EAD U2000 MKII) which is a very smooth analog-ish presentation. I'm thinking about auditioning a Cary 303-300 or 306, as a possible upgrade.
To realize their true available potential, you must use quality cabling: interconnects, speaker cable, line conditioning (for line-noise glare reduction), AC cords, dedicated power line & a quality AC outlet.
I've only tried a handful of different brand speaker cables; my best results so far are with MIT mid-to-upper line product.
One last admission: I'm not much of a classics fan either, but they really sound great via Klipsch's; Telarcs & Mobile Fidelity's especially. However my music collection is mainly classic rock + jazz. And of course, poorly recorded material comes across exactly as such: - you get out what you're putting in.
Boa definitely knows what he's talking about: the Heritage Klipsch's are so sensitive & revealing that many listeners don't like what they're hearing only due the poor quality of signal being input! These speakers are particular: if anything upstream is amiss then you are going to hear it. OTOH their dynamics are unbeatable IMO.
Your Carver is simply not high enough quality equipment for this job. I've tested these horns with many amps (Carver included) and most of them sounded just OK; not that great. I've had excellent results with a large Luxman (mosfet) amp, great results with Accuphase (mosfet), very decent with McCormack, decent with Classe, marginal with McIntosh, awful with Adcom. It's not just the equipment quality, it's all about synergy with your hardware & cabling too. Finding the right match for everything can be difficult & time consuming, but the rewards are highly worthwhile.
Mosfet amps work best for me here; I don't care for tubes & have found that the white noise "tube-rush" of such equipment is quite objectionable with horns due to their ultra sensitivity. While I've always perferred solid state sound, YMMV of course.
However a Golden Tube Audio SEP-2 pre driving that McCormack DNA-1 Deluxe amp sounded magical.
For your CD source, due to limited experience I can only recommend what I'm using now (EAD U2000 MKII) which is a very smooth analog-ish presentation. I'm thinking about auditioning a Cary 303-300 or 306, as a possible upgrade.
To realize their true available potential, you must use quality cabling: interconnects, speaker cable, line conditioning (for line-noise glare reduction), AC cords, dedicated power line & a quality AC outlet.
I've only tried a handful of different brand speaker cables; my best results so far are with MIT mid-to-upper line product.
One last admission: I'm not much of a classics fan either, but they really sound great via Klipsch's; Telarcs & Mobile Fidelity's especially. However my music collection is mainly classic rock + jazz. And of course, poorly recorded material comes across exactly as such: - you get out what you're putting in.