Somebody Tell Me Stereophile Review About Amazing is a Joke!

Ok! I've read the Stereophile Review on the Carver Amazing speakers accidentally from one of the links in this Forum.

WTF this guy is talking about Amazing being Beaming and Throwing Razor Sharp (very bright) trebel to the listener at 3m and the crap load of it?

Somebody Please Tell me that was a joke and not true for most part. I don't really trust any stereophile review up to now and I have never bought my gear based on their good (or bad) review.

Below is the link for the review on Stereophile website.

http://www.stereophile.com/floorloudspe ... index.html

And what's the dude talking about Silver 7-t to be the worse of both the tubes and SS amp? Is this guy still in biz these days? I hope not!

Ah Megastat, you have finally discovered our deep, dark secret ..... MWAAAHAAAAAHAAAAA!!!!

He is the scoop. A few years before those reviews there was sonething called the Stereophile Carver Challenge. Basically Bob bet Stereophile Magazine that given 48 hours he could make any one of his amplifiers sound exactly like any high priced and highly regarded Tube Amplifier of Stereophile's choice. Bob not only won their challenge which pissed off the editors at Stereophile to no end, but launched a small war between the 2. The matter eventually went to court and to this day neither party can divulge what the settlement was but it was in Bob's favor.

The amplifier in the challenge was the M-1.0t which Bob made sound so identical to the reference Conrad Johnson Premiere 5 that the reviewers cound not tell them apart. Bob wnet on to imitate a Mark Levinson ML-2 with the M=1.5t and a Berning Tube Amp with the M-400t. People started saying that Bob could only imitate other people's amps, so Bob decided it was time to make an all out assault on the Tube amp market and came out with the Silver 7 Tube Amp which to this day is still regarded as one of the finest tube amps ever made. Bob then proceded to imitate his own Silver 7 Tube Amp with the Silver-7t and M-4.0t amps. All amps introduced after that that included the "Tube Transfer Function Modification" were modelled after the sound of no Tube Amp in particular.

Back to your original question: The people at Stereophile we so outraged at Bob beating them at their own game that Stereophile gave horrible reviews to anything that Carver made which always contradicted what was written in any other audio publication. Rumor was that Bob Caver sued Stereophile Magazine over the bad press, but what really happened was that Stereophile Magazine sued Bob Carver for using copies of their reviews in comparison to 5 other positive reviews in other publications. Bob countersued and could have legally put Stereophile Magazine out of business but settled out of court. Stereophile was banned from ever using the word Carver or referring to their products again and Bob wasn't allowed to use that ad in advertizing again.

There are several threads on here covering the whole situation which will make for hours of fascinating reading. While you are at it, make sure you read all about the famous amp in a Folgers coffee can that eventually because the M-400 Cube.

Coffee Can Amp.jpg (84.27 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

Use a pair of these monoblocks for the stereo in your kitchen!

-quote; Bob then proceded to imitate his own Silver 7 Tube Amp with the Silver-7t and M-4.0t amps. All amps introduced after that that included the "Tube Transfer Function Modification" were modelled after the sound of no Tube Amp in particular.




-the tfm line were designed to copy the silver 7's ['silver seven transfer function modified]...i have the bogus sales advertisement which incorrectly states the tfm 35 and 75 were included [as silver 7 emulating]...yourself and sir richp read the schematics and found this as untrue [like the tfm6 line and tfm15 line]...i think we all agreed before that the tfm6/ 15 [+varients], and the tfm35/ 75's were excluded as silver 7 emulators...pretty sure thats what you guyzes figured out

-the above linky, shows the 'bitterness' that stereophool had for mr BC...stereophool only insulted themselves i feel...and thats too bad really, mr BC did NOT deserve that


-at least this was my take [7t's and 9t's sound just fine to me and i love them !!!]...infact they are BRILLIANT

-same goes for the ALS's, tho, the plats and originals suffer somewhat, if not in a very large listening envirenment...say larger than 25' x 20' area or at least 10' hi ceilings [just my opinion]


-go slo

Thank you again OBI for posting an in depth story and being very helpful to the newbies here. :

Thank you BillD for a very cool Folger Amp picture which reminds me to keep the old coffee tin cans to recycle.

Thank you Mr. Maxx for another cool post...I like the way you use your keyboard.

I won't be a proud owner of the Platinum AmaZing without the help of you guys. Thanks and I am happy to tell you all that I've picked up a pair of Platinum Amazing from the seller today.

I'll be posting more impression later on in a new thread so please join me in a new thread.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all the members, readers here!

Thanks All!

You gotta understand where Dick Olsher is coming from to "get" his articles and reviews in StereoPhool. Mr. Olsher has been an "audio journalist" all his life--I don't think he's ever had an honest job--and he's lived an interesting life of privaledge--free gear, trips to shows, a little bit of fame--that he most likely woul dever have had if he'd been in another business. In the ensuing decades of his career, Mr. Olsher has actually started to believe the line of crap they spew at StereoPhool--that being that the writers for that rag have golden ears, cones rule and ribbons and planers suck, any amplifier that doesn't dim the streetlights on your corner when you turn it on isn't worth shit, Class "A" is the ONLY real aplifier topology (this, coming from a bunch of armchair wankers who couldn't produce a solid solder joint if their lives depended on it...) and have flip-flopped on "digital sound" more times than George Bush on the WMD issue.

And with Mr. Olsher's wealth and celebrity, he has launched a website full of really clunky-looking DIY speakers (ToyMaker could out-build him with one hand behind his back, AND I imagine it would sound better too!), and he started a vanity recording label expressly for the release of albums of his wife's singing...

Need I say more? Like many of the other wankers that write for (or have written for) StereoTool over the years, it is my opinion that Mr. Olsher has started believing his own BS--namely that he has golden ears, is somehow gifted by the Gods of Audio to hear things in systems that nobody else can perceive, and is endowed with special authority to pronounce his opinions to the media as "truth"...

This guy liked the "Final" ELS's better than the new Martin Logan Summits. I've heard them both, and it's my opinion that Dick Osher is either tone-deaf, or on some sort of psychoactive drug when he evaluates new gear and writes his reviews. Every set of Final ESLs that I've heard sounded good for their size, but they all sounded thin, anemic, and were utterly un-engaging musically. In my opinon, the Finals are a good speaker, and they are very innovative, but they ain't Martin Logans and have a LONG way to go before they'll have the big, lush, musically engaging sound that Logans can have...

That's my story and I'm sticking to it...

Megasat 16,

The Audio Critic gives his take on the lawsuit (settlement) between Stereophile and Carver. It is listed on Page pdf 11 in this back issue.
http://theaudiocritic.com/back_issues/T ... c_16_r.pdf In addition, there is a quite a complimentary review of the Carver Amazing Plat #4 in this same issue on page PDF 13.

I believe this may have resurfaced because I posted this review in the Carver Speaker Review section recently, not knowing it was already posted earlier under another section. viewtopic.php?f=55&t=4221
As many have said earlier, there are very positive reviews of the Carver Amazings in other mags.

Once you set these puppies up properly (they need plenty of room to breathe) and feed their hungry appetite with plenty of juice, (I am using a Carver TFM-75) you will not be disappointed. I have been very happy for the
last 17 years and I have heard a lot of speakers at many times the price since. Never felt the urge to upgrade yet based on past auditions.

Amazings & a TFM-75 drivin' 'em; there's a match made in Audio Heaven!

Just read Olshers review. How can you trust anything he says. My amazings are not overly bright. they are open and have awesome clarity. If you want bright you should hear my Klipsch RF-7s. Hope they tone down with age, but I'm not holding my breath.

That's why they make equalizers and tone controls.

I don't have an equalizer but I do know how to use my tone controls. No help. Maybe an equalizer is the ticket. Thanks for the hot tip.

Text of The Audio Critic comments on Carver/Stereophool lawsuit:

Who Sued Whom and Why: Stereophile and Carver Corporation in Court

I keep getting all sorts of inquires about last year's mysterious lawsuit between Stereophile and the Carver Corporation. Most of the inquirers are under the impression that Carver sued Stereophile. Not so. Maybe Stereophile would like the audio community to believe that, but that's not what happened. No audio manufacturer in his right mind (except, of course, Bose) would want to be the plaintiff against the free press in a suit about a bad review. The actual fact is that Stereophile sued Carver.

Why did they sue? Basically, because they didn't understand what they were getting themselves into. Carver had run a 12 page ad in the May/June 1990 issue of The Absolute Sound in which six Carver amplifier reviews were reprinted. one of them was Robert Harley's hatchet job on the Carver "Silver Seven-t" in the January 1990 Stereophile; the five others were highly favorable reviews, including one of mine. The ad made Stereophile look kind of stupid--like the schoolyard bully. Thereupon Stereophile sued Carver Corporation for copyright infringement, claiming the latter had no right to reprint the review without permission. Carver responded the standard way, by filing a countersuit.

Stereophile's suit was essentially frivolous and fell on its face in court--the text of an attack is not protected by copyright when reprinted in the context of a defense against it. Carver's countersuit, on the other hand, had some legal substance and threatened to bankrupt Stereophile if pursued to the finish. The claim was that a systematic pattern of maliciously discriminatory "Carver bashing" and recklessly irresponsible/incompetent equipment reviewing had caused multimillion-dollar losses to Carver Corporation. it could have turned into a First Amendment battle, but the courty ordered teh parties to go into arbitration first.

The outcome was a rather astonishing settlement, "with prejudice." For three years--1992, 1992, and 1993--Stereophile was forbidden to put the word "Carver" in print, just about regardless of context, with minor legalistic exceptions. They basically had to pretend that Carver didn't exist. Carver, in turn, was forbidden during those three years to discuss publicly the alleged deficiencies of Stereophile equipment testing or to disseminate reprints of the disputed Stereophile reviews, again with some additional minor legalisms.

The gist, as I interpret it: Stereophile signed away its First Amendment rights to prevent a possible disaster in court and in exchange receive what was the most important to it--silence on the touchy subject of its competence. A class act, eh? --Ed.

FYI: I copied this piece to the Bob Carver page in Wikipedia....

About forwarding this to Wikipedia:

THANK YOU GARY!

How about a post over in Nelson Pass Country ?? Nah, on second thought,DONT !!

How about a post over in Nelson Pass Country ?? Nah, on second thought,DONT !!

Exactly, what do you mean by your comment?