Same result two different amps.

Jstas

pearsall001's D-sonic 600 watt monoblock


Jstas' Carver Silver 7t 575 watt monoblock


Two different amps, same overall result. Anybody know what makes them so different or why the 575 watt amp has all that hardware but falls 25 watts short of the D-sonic?

Speedskater

With two different test protocols, a 25 watt difference is meaningless.

erniejade

Are you talking about the sound quality? or??????????

mhardy6647

Speedskater wrote: »

With two different test protocols, a 25 watt difference is meaningless.

Equivalent to 0.18 dB

:- P

EndersShadow

I believe the are different class amps too with the D-Sonic being a Class D amp whereas the Silver 7t's are A/B. That likely is the reason for the parts and wattage difference......

Jstas

I think y'all need to go read up transfer functions and how Bob Carver applied it to his amps. It's also how he took his M1.0t and duplicated the Conrad-Johnson amplifier for Stereophile I believe it was. Look up "The Carver Challenge" on Google.

Here's what a transfer function is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_function

Anyway, you can cite testing standards and such all you want. If you're going to mimic the progressive distortion curve of a tube amp with solid state parts, you need power and lots of it. Especially in reserve.

tonyb

Jstas wrote: »

Two different amps, same overall result. Anybody know what makes them so different or why the 575 watt amp has all that hardware but falls 25 watts short of the D-sonic?

Same result as in how ? Watts....sound ?

That old Carver/CJ test is about as old as cable debates. In the end, the only result that should interest anyone should be the sound, not a difference of watts.

So you had them both at PF, which did you prefer ?

pearsall001

Tony, the D-Sonic mono's were on duty the entire time. For whatever reason we never had John's Carver mono's fired up. The D-Sonic handled the Carver Amazing's with ease, Lou's modded LS9's also sounded fantastic as did the LSiM703's that Mark brought. Mark was very impressed with the way the LSiM703's sounded & he said he's heard them being powered with many other quality amps. The crazy part is they ran all weekend & remained very cool...didn't generate any heat what so ever. They were awesome cranking those Amazing's & they remained as cool as a cucumber.

cnh

I haven't heard Phil's D-amps. But I have heard John's Carver set up on the Amazings and I have to say that on Symphonic music I've never heard anything reproduce a concert hall the way they do (with the speakers in tow, of course). Very impressive!

Would have been interested in how Phil's amps sounded on the same towers. Alas, that didn't happen.

But cetainly Jstas could give a thumbs up or thumbs down regarding a comparison since he's heard both. From the original post, it would seem, or at least one might infer, that they're "similar"?

cnh

Jstas

tonyb wrote: »

Jstas wrote: »

Two different amps, same overall result. Anybody know what makes them so different or why the 575 watt amp has all that hardware but falls 25 watts short of the D-sonic?

Same result as in how ? Watts....sound ?

That old Carver/CJ test is about as old as cable debates. In the end, the only result that should interest anyone should be the sound, not a difference of watts.

So you had them both at PF, which did you prefer ?

Ummmm....thought it was obvious?

Both sounded similar and both had the same relative power levels. Neither amp gets necessarily hot when driving a load like the Amazings which is impressive in that respect alone. Shows that both amps have a tremendous amount of overhead.

The difference I was pointing out with the pictures here is that you have two amps with wildly different approaches to the same result. That result being big power in a relatively small package.

The D-sonic uses Class-D tech and could be any one of the Class-D sub amps for car audio I have stacked in the basement. Unlike the Class-D amps for 12v systems, there isn't a ton of amperage coursing through them to achieve the necessary power levels 'cause a 120V AC feed has all the juice you need to reach the 600 watt power levels and still be able to power a second one to 600 watts too without stepping up voltage and dissipating current as heat.

The Carver, on the other hand, uses a brute force method but not to get the power out of it but to produce the sound it does. The Silver 7t is supposed to be a solid-state duplication of the analog Silver 7. The Silver 7 is Carver's idea of a perfect tube amp. A tube amp has that "warm sound" that everybody raves about. Otherwise, it's really no different than a solid state amp in regards to sound quality. Efficiency is a whole other story though.

The "tube sound" comes from it's progressive distortion slopes. It's not that the tube amp has more power but people incorrectly state that a tube amp can be "over driven" anyway. That's not what is happening. Overdriving the amp implies that it is producing more power than it is rated at. What's actually happening is that because of the progressive distortion curve, you're pushing that amp's input signal past it's distortion point. A solid state amp has a definitive distortion point and it sounds like destruction and you back off.

A tube amp's distortion point is softer and you get that "warm" sound because your analog amplification signal is being pushed outside of it's range but instead of a hard cut off, you're snipping off the very extremes of the signal being amplified. This tends to cull things like a harsh treble response, sibilance and the **** noise a clipping woofer will make. Because of that you lose the screeching of a tweeter being pushed hard and the bass gets a bit more boomy which people equate to "more natural" 'cause acoustics don't always play fair.

Tube amps are electrically robust in that they can tolerate overloads for much longer periods than their solid-state siblings. These are significantly larger loads we are talking about that would destroy your typical bipolar transistor systems in fractions of a second and turn diodes into miniature mushroom clouds. Because of that though, they can withstand very high transient peak voltages without damage. They also operate at applied voltages well below their maximum capability. This means they can tolerate the overloads caused by clipping better than a solid state amp can 'cause the have significant overhead inherent in the circuit design. The softer clipping that occurs when overloading the circuit is what gives that softer, more pleasant and more musically satisfying sound.

You hit the hard distortion point of a tube amp when you push the apogee of that curve (or the valley) entirely out of the amplification range and the entire signal stream actually gets clipped. That's because of the inherent way that solid state amplifies a signal with circuit switching but tubes amplify a signal by pushing a storm of electrons across plates in a vacuum. The solid state will "switch" and if the signal is out of range, there's nothing for the "switch" to "switch" to, in a sense, and you get feedback in the circuit and subsequent distortion. The tube plates don't work in the same manner and the amount of electrons flowing across the plates just changes as the voltage across the anode and cathode changes. The hard distortion in a tube amplifier occurs when the draw is so great that the output transformers or capacitors cannot handle the current draw or the circuit resistance changes enough that you lose potential and bias across the plates/grid and the tube "opens".

Granted, I'm trying to simplify this stuff so if I'm off on something, it's not intentional, it's just some high level stuff that is hard to explain to non-tech people. Non-tech people being not an electrical engineer so don't take offense at that either. Then again, I wouldn't have to explain this stuff to an electrical engineer.

So to mimic that tube curve, you need HUGE amounts of reserve power to tap when you start pushing those distortion points. That doesn't mean you are generating more than 575 watts of power. It means that as the resistance goes up in the circuit that you are driving past distortion, you have enough power in reserve to maintain that 575 watt power rating even though you are overloading it past that distortion point. That's the reason for the giant transformer in the Carver amp as well as those huge capacitors. It's also the reason why the Carver amp has more circuitry in it than the D-sonic (you can't see all of the wires and PCB's in the Carver 'cause I only removed the top cover 'cause disassembling the amp case needs a dead chicken, a voodoo priest and whole brace of rabbits feet for luck). The Carver is performing some magic in there to tailor that signal to get that softer clipping sound without actually having a soft clipping point. It needs crazy power in reserve to do that too. I mean look at the size of that transformer. That should be able to support 1,000 watts or more but it's only rated at 575. I've only gotten those amps hot to the touch once in the entire time I've had them and that was running a bass CD through them 'cause I have issues.

All this doesn't mean that you can overdrive the Carver amp. You can't. That's a good way to break an expensive amp. What it does mean is that there is tons of reserve power so that where a normal solid state amp would start clipping due to insufficient current to support the power output, the Silver 7t can support the draw.

They are not the loudest amps out there and they are a muted sound, I guess when compared to the D-sonics but, unlike the D-sonics which had a more...I dunno...sterile sound maybe...the Carvers have a very natural sound to them The D-sonics are brighter and respond very well to transitions in program material but the Carvers have a softer response. Not a slower one, just...you get the feeling that while there is raw power there and lots of it, it's more like driving a Rolls Royce where you don't have an RPM gauge but a gauge that tells you that you have this much Earth moving power in reserve. Where as the D-sonics are Ferraris through and through powering everything at a full tilt. The D-sonics get louder and they can change a bit as certain response peaks and valleys get pushed harder. The Carvers...they just get louder. The sound doesn't change whether it's at 1 or at 11, it's just louder or quieter.

Jstas

Said my post was too long.....: \

Here's the rest.....





At the same time, a Rolls Royce will soak up a road, no matter how crappy it is, and make it an enjoyable experience where as the Ferrari will beat you up on a harsh road and expose every shortcoming of the road in obnoxious fervor. Both can make the experience of driving enjoyable, they just go about it different ways, if that makes sense.

Personally, I like the Carver sound better. The Amazings sounded great on the D-sonics, don't get me wrong! Everybody else seemed to like them too. But the Carvers, they don't play real loud but there's nothing...missing or added, if that makes any sense too. I've been told that the Silver 7t's won't handle the Amazings but I don't know what anyone is talking about in that respect. They plug along pushing those pigs without a problem. If you want to drive the Amazings into oblivion while shaking your house down, Silver 7t's are not for you. If you want some of the most accurately reproduced audio you've ever heard, the Silver 7t's are worth a look. The thing I like about the Carver amps is that they will take any source and work well with it. They will expose a source's shortcomings pretty easily too. But what the Carvers will do, especially strapped up to the Amazings, they will show you how awful your media is or isn't. The D-sonics, being brighter and more transparent, they tended to hide programming flaws fairly well but changing sources, even when plumbed through the Adcom GFP-750, there was a large difference between them that wasn't as apparent in the Carvers.