User's Manual
4
CHAPTER 1
Dear Friend,
Thank you for purchasing my
Sun
Þ
re Cinema Seven
seven channel power ampli
Þ
er. I hope you
enjoy it and the music it makes as much as I have enjoyed creating it for you.
This magni
Þ
cent ampli
Þ
er represents my very latest thinking - and my best ampli
Þ
er design ever.
I’ve spent over twenty years developing it, and cannot imagine how I could make it any better, or
re
Þ
ne it any further. No matter what, its performance is, at
Þ
rst, somewhat dif
Þ
cult to believe.
The
Signature Edition
can pro duce
400 watts rms per channel into 8 ohms
and
800 watts rms
into 4 ohms
.
The
Standard Edition
can pro duce
200 watts rms per channel into 8 ohms,
and
400 watts rms
into 4 ohms
.
The big breakthrough feature of the
Cinema Seven
is its uncanny tracking downconverter, which
uses 18 Herculean Mosfets in the Signature Edition and 12 in the Standard Edition. This allows the
Cinema Seven
to produce phenominal power output, without the heat generated by conventional
designs.
The circuit boards are heavy glass epoxy, double sided, with a Faraday shield on the back side.
All resistors in the signal path are 1% tolerance, metal-
Þ
lm. Critical ca pac i tors are
Þ
lm devices with
high dielectric strength and ultra low absorption characteristics. An enor mous
Cinema Seven
power
source built around a massive power transformer provides the ultimate muscle for limitless dynamics.
I could go on and on, but here’s the best part: I’ve included two kinds of outputs on the
front left
and
front right
channels:
(1) a standard
voltage-source
(i.e., near zero im ped ance) output for all typical applications and:
(2) a higher-impedance
current-source
output, which many prefer for electrostatic, planar
mag net ic, or ribbon speakers. Or you can biwire your system with the voltage source driving
the woofer(s) and the current source driving the upper part of the system. In many cases this
provides by far the best possible in ter face between the ampli
Þ
er and the speaker system.
Whichever way you decide to hook up the
Sun
Þ
re Cinema Seven
, it will create a multilayered
sound stage that is deep, wide, three-di men sion al, and utterly be liev able. The optional cur rent-source
output can coax forth a sen su ous, delicately detailed musical voice long associated with low-powered
classic tube ampli
Þ
ers. (The current-source char ac ter is tic of vacuum tubes is the dominant factor in
the sound stage delivery of classic tube ampli
Þ
ers).
Bob Carv er, Ampli
Þ
er De sign er, Physicist
Introduction
