Sunfire Series II - Manual (Page 4)

4
User's Manual
Introduction
Bob Carver, Amplifier Designer, Physicist
Introduction
Dear Friend:
Thank you for purchasing my Sunfire Cinema Gran d Signature Edition five channel power
amplifier. I hope you enjoy it and the music it makes as much as I have enjoyed creating it for you.
This magnificent amplifier represents my very latest thinking - and my best amplifier design
ever I’ve spent over twenty years developing it, and cannot imagine how I could make it any better,
or refine it any further. No matter what, its performance is at first, somewhat difficult to believe.
The Cinema Grand Signature can produce 425 watts rms per channel into 8 ohms, and
850 watts rms per channel into 4 ohms.
The big breakthrough feature of the Cinema Grand Signature is its uncanny tracking
downconverter, which uses 18 Herculean Mosfets.
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-film. Critical capacitors are film
devices with high dielectric strength and ultra low absorption characteristics. An enormous
Cinema
Grand Signature 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 center,
front left and front right:
(1) a standard voltage-source (i.e., near zero impedance) output for all typical applications and
(2) a higher-impedance current-source output, which many prefer for electrostatic, planar mag-
netic, 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 interface between the amplifier and the speaker system.
Whichever way you decide to hook up the Sunfire Cinema Grand Signature, it will create a
multilayered soundstage that is deep, wide, three-dimensional, and utterly believable. The optional
current-source output can coax forth a sensuous, delicately detailed musical voice long associated
with low-powered classic tube amplifiers. (The current-source characteristic of vacuum tubes is
the dominant factor in the soundstage delivery of classic tube amplifiers).