Photo from Axpona

I see they addes a gain pot & feedback switch to the little tube amp~

I notice that once again, these are not in a room with an 8' ceiling. Poor Bob.

I also wonder how the right rear corner of the room [behind the right speaker] will affect the sound stage and frequencies heard at the listening spot. That may skew some impressions....

I'm going to re-post this; quote from BluesMan (Charles in Savannah, GA) over at thecarversite.com:




I'd just like to add that these speakers are easily the best of the show.
With the side firing drivers that are basically floor to ceiling the soundstage is huge, and more importantly the s.w.e.e.t. spot is equally huge.
In fact there was not a bad seat in the room.
The speakers have a s.w.e.e.t. enveloping sound that effortlessly fills the room all around you and you can't pinpoint exactly where the sound is coming from.

When the Stereophile Mag. reviewer Jason Serinus reviewed these spks.
I was sitting in the front row next to him, he was in the center and I was to his left.
I was directly in front of the left speaker about 6' back from it.
Jason was given the remote control and he cranked them up the loudest I heard them play all day, and they just came alive.
Even though I was only a few feet from the speaker I could not hear the sound coming out from the speaker at me like every other speaker in the show, but it just seemed to emanate from behind and in between the two speakers.
I thought they were awesome at the more moderate levels that they had been playing at so people could ask the two Bob's questions without having to shout.
All I can say is the more power you put to them the better they sound.
Now don't mistake that last statement to mean that they have to be cranked up to sound good like many inefficient speakers need to be to sound good, nothing could be farther from the truth.
At the moderate levels the full range of sound/music is being accurately and fully reproduced as close to live music as I've ever heard from a speaker.
At the louder levels no listening fatigue at all was experienced, unlike many of the other systems at the show.

Also note in the above picture of the Black Beautys the shot from above shows what looks like massive amounts of dust on the amps, not so, it is charcoal gray specks (not a metal flake) in the gloss black finish.
For lack of a better term similar to splatter paint but extremely subtle, and very tastefully done.
In fact we didn't notice it until one of Bob's helpers, Tony pointed it out to us, thus the picture.
The finish on all these amps is like a top quality custom show car professional paint job.

For Bob's seminar we got to the conference room about 30 min. before Bob's speech was scheduled to start.
We were the first ones there, and lo and behold after a few minutes in Bob walked and came over and sat with us.
We had a nice conversation with him and just us for quite a while until this speech started.
What an awesome, humble down to earth person he is, and he has a great sense of humor, BEST DAY EVER !!!!!!!!
We also spoke with Bob Farinelli at length several times, and he also is a class act and just an all around nice guy too.

We have quite a few more photos and I have some brochures to scan into my comp. and Bluesman and I will work on those and be posting them at some point tomorrow.

What an awesome, humble down to earth person he is, and he has a great sense of humor, BEST DAY EVER !!!!!!!!
We also spoke with Bob Farinelli at length several times, and he also is a class act and just an all around nice guy too.

While I can not speak of the review of the speakers, I can say the his review of the two Bob's was spot on. Glad to hear that he liked them. Easily the best of show? That's quite a statement.

Tom, I heard them at Carverfest, too. Try to completely erase the sound of that speaker from your mind. What I heard at Axpona was an entirely different sound.

A few things about them:

The ribbons blend now. Yay Team Biamp!
They loaf along at extreme volume. Bob's max SPL figure is nutz. Watch the video when it gets posted.
They sound great everywhere in the room; even when there's a crowd standing between you and the left channel.
That was the worst, livest demo room I've ever SEEN. Yet, it didn't sound that way. Look ma, no room treatments. What kind of strange voodoo was going on with that?
I'm normally a pretty harsh critic of ribbons and usually prefer ESLs and even I liked how they sounded.
I can't say for sure if they sound better than the MBLs or the CLXs because those require you to be in the one exact right spot, (notice I didn't say the s - word) and there were just too many people there.
Which brings me to an important thing that it's easy to lose sight of:
Bob's new ALS speakers sound really good if you want to sit in your favorite chair and focus your mind like a laser beam on their sound. They'll pass that test for sure.
I can see these as being a sort of gateway speaker for all of your visiting non-audio friends. If you had these guys in the room, they could just notice on their own.
"Hey, that sounds great! And look honey, no big, ugly boxes. Can we get a set?"
Just don't tell them how much they cost

Hello, Martin and thank you for your observations. With the price fluctuating so much before, during and after Carverfest, what is the actual suggested retail price they are saying at the show?

I heard a couple of different prices, but none from anyone official, both started with a 2.


Oh, and the other Bob took the display "20W tube amp" out in the hall and explained all 9 million of the toggle switches on it. I think he's still deciding which options to include in the finished product. He also told me some other changes they're thinking about. Not sure what I can and can't say. But there might be some additional parts we can try on them. Personally, I like the idea of tinkering with and improving on a design.

Thanks, Martin. Are you at liberty to say whether these changes are for the reliability of the unit or sound? Perhaps both?

Well, the different switches are probably to broaden the potential market.
Not entirely sure of the motivation behind the other ones.
I suppose it could be either of the two things.
I'll send an email and ask what's what.

well it might be for a different feedback or switching from pentode to triode:

The EL84 is normally a pentode, which means it has 5 elements inside the tube: anode, cathode, and three grids in between. Grid 2 normally has its own node on the power supply, but in triode mode, it is connected to the anode. This cuts the power, and makes the amp darker.
In simpler term, triode is half of pentode. When you flip the switch it cuts off half of the tubes.

is this amp still going to be point to point, or will it have printed boards?

lower voltage?

so many ??????????????'s

The two added things I saw are a gain pot & feedback switch, which Bob put on the 180s & 305s.

On his site, www.bobcarver.com, they state ALL amps are handmade point-to-point wiring.

I can't say for sure if they sound better than the MBLs

I've heard various MBL's in a multitude of locations, so I feel that I know the sound pretty well, very airy and open with no center and lacking a defined sound stage. In other words, not real. Am I to take it that Bob's new speakers present the same sound?

The two added things I saw are a gain pot & feedback switch, which Bob put on the 180s & 305s.

On his site, http://www.bobcarver.com, they state ALL amps are handmade point-to-point wiring.

Not exactly.... They took the clutter of components and put them on Turret boards, it is not as pretty, but from the sounds of it, it is much more cost effective...
Most of the changes that were done to the amp are NOT accually going to be there. Bob C. vetoed them out, and the only modification that will be kept is a Mono to Stereo switch on the back. Also, the transformers are going to be changed to a lower voltage, but they will still be over 300v. The Point to Point wiring is still there, but it is not as neatly done as Joe's or my amplifiers, when I asked Bob F. he said that it would be cleaned up a little, but don't forget, he is paying people by the hour.

Seeing how the modifications are not going to be in the final product, the mods included a gain knob, input switch, a 2nd input, an output for a sub or daisy chaining amps, a mono to stereo switch and a pentode to triode switch. As stated above, the only change that will stay is the mono to stereo switch.


Another small hint of information that I got was about the VTA900's (Silver Nines). From what I heard, Tubular Joe will be hand building them for Bob Carver LLC because they will not be a high quantity item. There was also a rumor about a 100 WPC tube amp running off of KT120's (Toy Maker's original idea.....) in the future.




So much for me building the CarverFest amps......

I can't say for sure if they sound better than the MBLs

I've heard various MBL's in a multitude of locations, so I feel that I know the sound pretty well, very airy and open with no center and lacking a defined sound stage. In other words, not real. Am I to take it that Bob's new speakers present the same sound?

I didn't mean to leave that impression.
Someone else had stated that they sounded better than the MBLs.
I was simply saying that I couldn't make any judgement because
of the adverse conditions in the MBL room.
Ask Don, it was very crowded in there.

As to the Martin Logans, they were alternating between something I didn't like on reel-to-reel on 2 channel and digital on 5.1 stuff. I wish they would have just played something I knew in 2 channel.

Maybe one of you that are attending can answer a question that EndersShadow and I had while on the phone today. There was talk about the crossover being able to be hooked up to a computer and customized to the room.....as well as talk of a tubed crossover. Can it be conformed as to what kind of crossover was in the debut?