Beautiful speakers, beautiful sound, nice price

I too got on the Costco boat and have been more than thrilled with these speakers since day one! They look and sound beautiful and have WAY more filling power (especially in the mid-range) than the Energy Take 5's (which was my alternate choice). I'm very happy to have made the choice I did, these speakers will be with me for years to come!

Similar Products Used:

Energy Take 5's

It sounded really good at first, Looks GREAT, Binding post on back

Blows up after about 2 years of use and the speaker goes bad with it. (unless the amp going bad made the speaker sound bad aswell)

DO NOT BUY, Please do not wast your time with this product. I am not rating the speaker system just the subwoofer as that is all I have but the sub will go bad. Mine is dead now and has been for some time. I recently ordered an amp that should fit in its place. In a earlyer review it said that 2 things got burnt up on mine it was more like 4 or 5. this is not a good sub to buy. However it does look good and that is why I bought it I just wish the inside was as good as the outside.

I bought carver cinema5.1 after auditioning all other competeters. They are on sale for $1199 at circuit city. Package contains fullrange bi-pole
for LR and fullrange Tri-Pole Surround LR which are very good for AC-3 and
DTS.

Carver not famous for their speakers though i am very impressed with quality
build. I did not returned their center and bought pinnacle gold. If you are
in market audition them.

I bought the Carver system ($499)and returned it. The 4 ohm factor was determinative. I think I'm going to save my money and buy the Definitive Technology Pro Cinema 100 or buy the Energy e:XL system piecemeal.

My friend and I just the Carver 5.1 system. They sound very good for the price we paid. We bought them direct from Carver.
FYI, shippiing charge from WA to CA is around $100. It may be more depends on where you live. It's like paying tax for me. At $700+shipping, the system is worth the price. LR speakkekrs sounds clear. Rear speakers is great. Subwoof is solid. The center speakekr is fair.

You can purchase the Cinema 5.1 at some Costco Stores. I found mine at teh Signal Hill, CA store for $499.00 they 1 left and a display which they will reduce 10% if they no longer plan on stocking. I am very pleased with the sound Check out thier website www.costco.com

Although these speakers are FANTASTIC, I mean, spectacular, for home theater, jazz, and vocals... they simply don't cut it for the wide range of music I listen to, which includes a lot of very rythmic music.. their reach for music below (I'd guess) 300hz is poor.. I don't know if that's a good estimate, but, for music, I don't think the sub works as well as I'd like.. and for the frequencies above subwoofer level, I don't think the fronts fulfill. I purchased these at CostCo two weeks ago, have them hooked up to a Denon AVR2700, and have used them almost constantly for these past two weeks. If you use them solely for home theater, I doubt you'll beat'm at anything around $500.. but, you can do much better for music. These can do vocals suberbly, and most midrange is covered, but, when you approach the lower end of the sound 'spectrum,' quality deteriorates. Depending on what you listen to, these may be a great match.. but, if you want /very/ 'flexible' speakers, these aren't for you...Granted, the Denon is meant for >6ohm speakers, but, despite that, I'm confident in my review.Best luck finding the speaker for you.

I got a set of these Costco last Christmas time. They cost $499.
The sound wonderful. In conjunction with my HK AV75 (reviewed on this site) music and movies sound better than any other system I've ever had.

The subwoofer is large enough to make my neighbors cry.

And the subwoofer broke, just like all of them will. I had mine repaired Everett Audio Repair @ 425-339-8404. Costco paid for the repair.

With the subwoofer gone, the system sounded pretty awful. It really depended on the sub for all of the bass.

Now with the sub back, life is wonderful. I would recommend these speakers to anyone.

I would have given 5 stars if the sub didn't break.

Those of you whe have a WORKING Carver 5.1 sub, please get it "fixed" before it goes bad...and I'll tell you now--IT WILL EVENTUALLY FAIL! Mine just went out last week. Took the internal amp apart, and there are two components (looks like regulators) that are sitting right smack dab in the middle of the circuit board, no heat sinks at all. There are two brown spots surrounding these (burn marks), and the traces are melted. Since there are holes on these, you could easily attach piece of aluminum to each to act as heat sinks. Use heat sink compound when you do. DON'T WAIT UNTIL IT DIES TO DO THIS!!! I wish I had done it sooner. NOTE: I am not an electrician, nor do I claim to know that this is the solution to this problem...just giving you folks a heads up.
~Aloha!

The Carver Cinema 5.1 speakers are very good, though obviously one cannot expect that they will be the best that money can buy, given their price. When properly set up and used with appropriate equipment (they are rated at 4 ohms), such as the Carver HTR-885.1, they are capable of reproducing all kinds of music and movie soundtracks more than adequately. It is true that speaking voices are sometimes rendered somewhat less than ideal (hence some other reviewers telling about replacing the center channel speaker), but this is not a great problem with most movies. (Incidentally, the drivers in the center channel are identical to the front firing drivers in the front right and left speakers [which also have rear firing drivers unlike the center channel], so the tonal qualty is fundamentally the same in all three front speakers. This means that voices coming from the right or left front channels will have the same basic characteristics as the center channel.)
The subwoofer has both speaker level inputs and line level inputs for added flexibility, and incorporates a bass management system (i.e., it can filter out the deep bass to the main speakers, if desired). When properly placed (usually this will be in a front corner of one's room), it provides deep and satisfying bass that can shake everything in an ordinary sized room. Still, if one is a bass fanatic, one might want more, and the subwoofer can be purchased separately if one wishes to have a second one (though in my apartment one is more than enough to disturb the neighbors).

The Carver Cinema 5.1 uses the same drivers as the Carver Cinema 5.2, so one can expect that the basic sound quality will be the same (though the Cinema 5.2 system has two subwoofers mounted in the front right and left tower speakers, with a 300 watt amp mounted in the center channel speaker [which has an additional midbass driver], instead of the separate subwoofer with a 150 watt amp and the bookshelf right and left front speakers of the Cinema 5.1 system.) Consequently, you can get more opinions about the basic sound quality of these speakers by reading the reviews of the Cinema 5.2 system.