sanford lindstrom

Welcome, you will find a wealth of information on Carver and audio in general along with great people here.

Welcome!! There are lots of knoweldgable people here to help you with all things Carver and most things audio. Sanford

Welcome

The first time I heard B & W speakers was with a friend who was looking for speakers in the late 1980s. He bought a pair of B & W Matrix speakers along with stands in black that were extremely well constructed and looked like they would last the ages. I have been impressed with sound of B & W ever since. I don't know what year or years your speakers were made. Maybe I should be looking for a different vintage than the newer CM series. I want a high quality bookshelf speakers I can use with a sub. Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for the reply. I love my floor standing Martin Logan ReQuest and my JBL 4311b speakers. Again both sets are in like new condition. My wife and I like speakers that are a little on the bright side. The B & W CM bookshelf series have appeal to me as they are not quite as bright sounding as my other two pairs of critical listening speakers and would provide a nice complement to my other listening environments. I am looking at these for a den area in a house I am building. I love the sound but if I purchase these, I will make sure that they reside on a bookshelf in a very protected location. Again the number of these I have seen on ebay and in the store with minor veneer damage concerns me. Thanks for the review of the sound quality. Do you use a subwooofer with yours? I will probably also go the ebay route on my purchase when the time comes.

I have been interested in picking up a pair probably used of B & W either CM1 or CM2 speakers. I have been reviewing ebay for the past couple of months and what I found is most pairs of these have some minor damage to the wood veneer. I have listened to a pair at my local Magnolia Hi Fi store a few months ago when they began selling B & W. When I was in the store the other day, both pairs of bookshelf B & W CM speakers in the demo room had minor damage to the wood veneer. These were the only speakers in the shop that had any cosmetic damage. I have owned a pair of JBL 4311b speakers in walnut since the late 70s and I have transported these speakers for many family functions in the back of my car while being careful they have been dinged a few times with no or very minimal damage. My wood ADS 300 speakers have a solid wood corners to protect the veneer and are very durable. Some of the pairs of these I have picked up on ebay had moderate dings that could be sanded out refinished and made to look like new. My Martin Logan ReQuests get hit on a regular basis gently by the vacumn cleaner nozzle and I have refinished the wood at the bottom a couple of times in last over 10 years of ownership. They look like new. I believe that my family treats my equipment with more than reasonable care and all of my equipment is in good condition that I am proud to have in any room of my home. I suspect that many of these slightly damaged B & W speakers have had more pampered lives than I have treated my speakers over the years, but they appear to easily susceptible to damage. Going back over 20 years, I have always have loved the sound of B & W speakers the quality of the finish is better than the other speakers I have owned, but I am a little worried about the durability of the veneers. Any comments before I consider the purchase would be appreciated.

Overall Speaker Performance: 5 Overall Speaker Quality: 5 Value For Money: 5 Reliability: 5 Have owned from new for more than 10 years with no problems Factory Technical Support: Don't know, have not needed tech suppport Factory Service: Don't know, have not needed factory service Ease of Doing Business With Your Dealer: 5 Magnolia Hi Fi Seattle (bought before Best Buy acquired Magnolia Hi Fi) I have been a customer of Magnolia Hi Fi for over 35 years since I was a teen. Ease of Doing Business With the Manufacturer: Don't know, have not had to contact manufacturer Distribution Network: 5 Dealer Knowledge: 5 Dealer service was great the salesman came to my house and assisted in setting up the speakers Technical Innovation: 5 Product Availability: 5 Magnolia had them in stock Brand Currently Owned: Martin Logan ReQuests Next Speaker Purchase: Will not trade in our ReQuests unless they at some point break and cannot be serviced. Next ESL speaker purchase will be Martin Logan center channel to use with the ReQuests. Next non-ESL speaker purchase will be B & W CM1 or CM2 for another smaller listening area.

I know what you mean. My daughters (18 and 21) love the music and love listening to our stereo gear and the ability to access our entire music collection in a lossless format via Sonos, this makes our music collection as easy to access as using an Ipod. They also appreciate the further increased fidelity of LPs. However in their everyday life, only one of my daughters would consider making the trade offs of dealing with pieces of equipment larger than a breadbox it takes to obtain the increased fidelity versus having an Ipod that is portable and personal. Neither daughter would never make the trade off of being able to randomly access their music versus the further increased fidelity of a LP. (Why would you want to listen to more than one song in a row from the same artist?) The extra fidelity is not worth it to them. When they listen to music as an activity as opposed to as background music, they listen to a song for 30 seconds to a minute and it is on to the next song. Even with music and artists that they love. They have told me that in the time it takes for my wife and I to listen to one song they can listen to 3 to 5 songs and they get more pleasure from the same amount of time than if they only listen to one song completely. When their friends come over they will listen to our system for hours but they too would not make the trade offs necessary to obtain better quality sound. They too recognize and are absolutely amazed by good sound, but won't make any sacrifices to space or convenience for better sound. Their listening patterns are in the same 30 second to 1 minute sound bytes with the same explanation of getting more pleasure from multiple songs in the same time period. My friends in college all had better quality sound systems then our kids generation of today. I guess we are all graduating to being old codgers. These trends have to be continued bad news for the music business and equipment manufacturers. I find these trends interesting in light of move from regular TV to HDTV which seems counter to what is happening in the music industry.

Great looking truck!! I am also a Northwesterner. I work in Seattle and live in Gig Harbor. Also complusive with cars and stereo stuff. Welcome. Sanford

I believe when using FLAC, when it is uncompressed you end up with a bit by bit identical copy of the original. That was one of the selling points when I selected the format when I ripped my cds to my NAS. When I ripped all of my music about 5 or more years back, disk space was a lot more expensive than it is now. My one terabyte NAS Buffalo Tera Server was around $1,000. Having your collection compressed in a manner where it could be uncompressed to recreate the original was more important from a cost standpoint in making Ipods and MP3 players a viable product than it would be today where a 1 Tb hard disk drive is less than $70 to purchase. One of the reasons there is all of the poor quality MP3 type music was the original high cost of disk space and memory. Highly compressed formats made the technology feasible from a cost standpoint. My kids' generation have grown up with much poorer quality sound reproduction than we did because of this factor. If I was doing it again today, I would look at storing my music in an uncompressed format providing the format supports album art and the rest of the tagging data. It would be great to see a time where digital music is stored a higher resolution than a standard CD in the same way that HD tv is replacing regular definition tv. At this point storage cost should not be a factor.

I use flac as my format for ripping digital music for my Sonos system. No loss of digital information and about a 2:1 compression from the original CD. I rip my CDs using Media Monkey a great program for managing a large music collection. My collection is a about 11,700 tracks at this time. Cover art and other tag information is stored with the music tracks. My Sonos gear inputs either into my Carver gear through ZP 80 zone players or directly into speakers through a ZP100 which has a 50 watt per channel amp built in. I love having wireless control of my entire music collection in a manner that is lossless and feeds directly into my main stereo system and is available throughout my home. You listen to a wider variety of music than if you have to load a CD one or several at a time into a CD player. The first thing I did after ripping my music collection was to sell my Carver CD player and Carver 5 disk CD changer. When we have guests over, they play music from our system that we may not have heard for years. Makes for a great evening. Also the access for internet radio from Sonos with better sound than a tuner is an advantage and we have not signed up for any of the music services except for the free subscription to Pandora which we use occasionally.

Thanks. I will order the parts tomorrow.

I measured the voltage across the existing LED in the C-1 and it was 1.9 volts. It appears that the specs for the LED specified is 4 volts. I assume that the replacement resistor increases the voltage to the LED? Also the company that lists the LED only shows a 470 ohm 1/2 watt resistor. I also assume that the 470 ohm resistor will work in place of a 480 ohm resistor? Sorry for all of the questions, but this will be my first mod to any stereo equipment and I want to get it right. A couple of times previously I have successfully repaired cold solder joints in audio/video gear. This project looks like it is something I can attempt. Thanks again.

Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome. I would normally post pictures of my system but much of my equipment is in storage while we are building our new home. I am currently using a CT-7, my M1.0t and my martin logans and a 42" plasma tv and DVD player in my rental home's living room. I also have some of my Sonos gear with my ADS speakers setup in the bedrooms and office. We should be breaking ground on our garage/guest house within the next 90 days. We are in a varaiance application period for our main house as it is located close to the beach. We hope to break ground on the main house by the end of summer providing all goes well. We will be moving into the guest house late summer as our lease on our rental home ends on September 1. I know that I should probably post this on the modfication forum, but I was wondering what the specifications are for the blue leds that some members have used in their amps and C-1. We are going to have some blue colored ourdoor lighting I would like to put the blue leds in some of my Carver equipment. I had the cover of my C-1 open last night and it looked like changing the led would be a project within the range of my skills. I would also like where to buy these leds. Thanks again for the warm welcome.

Yes I am fortunate. My wife loves music and she can tell the difference in sound between speakers and will usually choose what I would pick. If a smaller speaker were to sound the same she would pick it but she puts sound quality first and will decorate around what sounds the best. As for wanting the Monoliths, I stated that they were too big for the room and outside of the budget. The Requests have been the better choice and have worked out great. The Requests have the look of a piece of art or a modern musical instrument and have blended in well even though they are large in size and probably not acceptable to many spouses.

I will probably look at some of the higher end B & W speakers also. The CM series are attractive to me because they will fit on a bookshelf and the boxes are conventional in design with flat sides. The space they are going into will be small. I am looking for something compact between my ADS speakers and my JBLs & Martin Logans in size. I believe these speakers still have the tweeters with the tuned tubes of the same design the from the higher end B & W speakers. I understand the bass limitations, but I would pair them with my Velodyne UDL-15 sub. I would assume that the small B & W speakers and Velodyne combination would work well. Thanks for the suggestion.

I am new to this forum. I have been a lurker for awhile. I have been a Carver fan since the 1980s and have owned a fair number of Caver components. Currently I have two each M1.0t & CT7 and one of each of the following; M1.5t, C-1, TX11a My non Carver gear includes an extensive Sonos system with an large library of music ripped in FLAC format along with a pair of Martin Logan Request speakers, JBL 4311b monitors and a collection of ADS 300 speakers (both wood and metal cabinets) for non critical listening. I also own a Velodyne UDL-15 subwoofer. I also have a Niles MSA-10 to distribute the output of one amp to up to 10 pairs of speakers. I am in the process of building a new log home and I am considering to replacing my Sony HT reciever with an Emotiva UMC-1 along with Carver amp(s) and a to be acquired Martin Logan center speaker. My last home had in wall speakers for the HT setup. I was wondering if any forum members have had experience with Emotiva products. It appears that this company is similar to what Carver Corporation was back in the day. The flexibility of the UMC-1 HT preamp at $699.99 is amazing and is the type of product that Carver Corp would have produced. Attractive price and great technology. I am planning on sticking with Carver for my two channel music systems (I love the sound and look of the equipment) but I am looking at options for my HT setup. Sunfire is currently out of my budget. I have had my Caver Amps repaired several times in the past by both Carver/Sunfire in Snohomish Washington, by a couple of repair shops in the Seattle area with ex Carver employees. I hope to be able to have the Mark II conversion done on at least one of my M1.0t amps. This is a great forum even for those of us that don't have the skills to open the box and get out the soldering iron. Thanks