CARVER CT-17 Sonic Holography Preamplifier Tuner

Wow, I have seen more 17s in the last two months on Ebay to wonder what is up. Either everyone is dumping theirs finally, or some have sold for top dolar, and folks are jumping on the Ebay bandwagon. I have been wondering about getting one, but am not sure if they will produce in todays demanding home theater needs. Any words of wisdom? I value thoughts from Carver audiophiles here. BTW..I do have obbsessive Carver whatever, with 17 Carver components that I can think of right now. One thing that I can guess is that it is a Carver with sonic holigraphy that also supports home theater.

They don't have the processing ability for the newer audio formats like the dolby Pro Logic IIx and such. I have a Onkyo receiver at the moment which I am quite happy with but when I get the money I will be upgrading to a Sunfire TGP III or something of the sort.

You'll love a TGP-III — I do. I only wish they'd update the firmware to support newer formats as they come out.

Speaking of Sunfire processors. Have you how many TG-5's there are on Ebay. Sunfire has a new line and they dumped all the 5's. These things were over three grand. I paid 1800 for mine. Right now theses units are all over ebay at 1200 bucks brand new. I bought mine about 6 months ago. Sure wish I had waited . Why not pick up one of those. I found that Carvers CT line of preamps never sounded near as good as the C line. We did AB's one time and found the unit I was trying to be very poor sound wise as compared to say the C1 or C16. I'm not going to say they were crappy( I did that onetime with the Carver ESCU box and was told I didn't know what I was talking about) but in my opinon they were not all that good. Art

-mr tah800; i agree w/ you concerning the 'ct' pres ive owned...for me they did not compare favorably vs the 'c' line

-as far a the esc-u box...i was bein a 'dick', to you, and do apologize...after all you were stating your honest opinion and thats what this Forum iz all about [my opinion]...sharing the good/ bad and junk weve experienced



-and mr tah800; dont feel bad...every bloody time i spend over 1, i see the same item cheaper within a month...never fails

If you are looking for something that is up-to-date for home theater, you can beat one of the mid-range Onkyo receivers, such as the TX-SR706 (or slightly older TX-SR705). They decode the newest sound formats (DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD, they have the Audyussy EQ system, four (three) HDMI 1.3a inputs to one HDMI 1.3a output and are reasonably price. Use the pre-outs if you prefer to use a Carver/Sunfire amp(s) for more power.

I'm a newb to HT but I just bought a Denon AVR 4800 receiver for not much money. It's not up to date by any means but it's light years ahead of the CTVs by Carver(or so I am told) Now to figure out what the Hell I'm doing with it is my next obstacle!!! It won't take much to make me happy, due to the fact that up till now, I've only had two tiny speakers built into the TV to listen to. Geoff