I originally wrote tjhis for AudioReview and it may require editing.
Price Paid: $2600.00 from Swallen's Mansfield
Summary:
I salivated over these speakers when I first heard them. I heard things on my reference discs I'd not heard before and realized some of them(the discs) were junk. I needed to upgrade some of my listening material, but that's not a bad thing.
I live near Progressive Audio in Columbus,Ohio. They claim to have one of the 2 best listening rooms in the world. Back in the day they even ran ads in Stereophile. Yeah, they don't like Bob Carver or his equipment so I go there just to let them try to change my mind. I've been able to hear systems costing unpwards of $250,000 and have yet to hear something that is substantially better than the Carver system I have. Sure the Wilson X-1s have a wee bit more base extension, but for 70K more I'd like to get something. Theil, Vandersteen and the like aren't even in the ballpark with the Amazings.
I play some acoustic stuff and the articulation of the instruments and the solidity of the image in the soundfield is Amazing(thus the name). I heard some image {float} in the X-1s. While I have heard speakers with a wee bit more bass extention I don't miss it in the Amazing Silvers.
The tonal balance seems to be linear from high treble through the lowest registers of deep bass. Synthesizer classics from the '70s Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes and Synergy have a punch and gritiness on the recordings most speakers just gloss over. They don't seem to get it right, the Amazings do.
Vinyl sounds wonderous. My Rolling Stones, Beatles and Grand Funk Railroad LPs sound as big as the bands did. The Count , The Duke and the Chairman have taken on life again. Harry chapin sounds as laid-back as Harry did:-)
I have one of the original Telarc 1812 Overture LP discs from the late '70s. When those cannons go off you'd think you were at Baldwin-Wallace the day they taped it. This is the ONLY system I've ever heard that recording sound *right* on.
My system is composed of a Carver C-19 pre-amp, Carver TX-11 tuner, Carver SDA/490t CD player, Technics SL-1900b turntable, an Optimus DCC-2000 DCC machine, a Carver C-9 sonic Hologram generator, DBX-3BX range expander and DBX-120 Subharmonic synthesizer, a pair of bridged Carver TFM-55s feeding my Carver Silver edition Amazing loudspeakers.
Strengths:
Flat frequency response. Rock solid imaging. Broad/deep soundstage. Female voicing and strings are of the gods. Excellent bass SLAM. This is a very articulate and revealing speaker. If you have (c)rap listening material, this speaker is not for you.
Weaknesses:
Heavy/Big might not be SO approved. Of course SHE can be traded for someone more reasonable. Power requirement is high. I have 1200 watts RMS per channel. That seems to be about right. You never run out of headroom.
