"Smarty"
Phil Allison wrote:

Bob Carver was and is a colossal bull****ter.

Take his " Magnetic Field " amp nonsense for example - purest marketing
hype and very misleading.


Indeed he was a true bull****ter, but he was an extremely capable engineer
as well,


** The former destroyed any credibility the latter might have given him.

Some of his amplifier designs were OK while others were piles of utter
rubbish that should never have gone on sale.

That is NOT the hallmark of a "capable engineer".


In Carver's case, he had an amazing and inquisitive mind, and many of his
designs offered things not seen elsewhere. Even the 'magnetic field'
amplifier itself had a remarkable tracking power supply and compact design
which Carver pioneered,

** It did NOT have a tracking PSU - that is one of the many misleading
claims made about it. The "Carver Cube" as it as known was marketed as
something it CLEARLY was NOT and doing that is in breach of consumer
law.

The professional version ( the PM1.5 ) was a near disaster and his other
desperate attempts to eliminate the iron transformer ( eg the PM2.0) were
even worse.


and his 'auto correlator' in the earlier Phase Linear and Carver preamps
was a very impressive noise reducer when tape hiss and other problems were
being ignored by many other preamp builders. His tiny True Subwoofer was
another very innovative design. I was personally a very big fan of his
Sonic Hologram, the first consumer interaural canceller unlike any other
device offered at that time except for a very weak competitor from Sound
Concepts using a very noisy bucket brigrade delay line.

** None of the above are any more than gimmicks - and don't Yanks love
gimmicks.

His form of bull**** I find perfectly tolerable since he is person who
knows the engineering details.

** You are fooling yourself.



.... Phil