As a long time audiophile I'm finally able to bi-amp my setup. I'm using two identical amps in a vertical bi-amp configuration.
Now me not fully understanding all of the ins/outs of internal speaker crossovers and what not. I've read quite a few people tell me that bi-amping like I'm doing whether it's vertical or horizontal bi-amping is a waste since there's really not a improvement because of how speaker manufacturers design the internal crossovers.
Can anyone explain to a third grader how it's beneficial or if the naysayers are correct in the statement?
OK folks. Listen up. Here's WHY active crossovers are so very much better than passive. A single loudspeaker driver is an inductor, and provides a frequency dependent, reactive load to an amplifier. Looking at the image here, the blue line on the bottom is the frequency dependent impedance curve for an SB Acoustics SB29RDAC Ring Dome Tweeter, and it typical of any dynamic tweeter. As you can see, it is anything but flat, yet it is listed as having a 4 ohm impedance. It's 4 ohms at about 1200 hz, but at 600 hz, has an impedance of nearly 10 ohms.
Now if you put a passive crossover circuit in front of it, you add capacitors, resistors and inductors, which then give you a frequency dependent impedance curve which looks like a Coney Island roller coaster. And that's just for a tweeter high-pass circuit.
Now when you add in mid and bass drivers, with high and low pass filters there... It's a real mess. But we're not done there yet. Nope. Many of your extreme hi-end loudspeakers add in equalization to their crossover designs, which makes that impedance curve even worse. This is very hard for an amp to properly manage. That's why people drop many, many thousands of dollars on things like Krell, Threshhold, Bryston, or Rowland Research solid state power amps.
Now when you use an active crossover, an amp channel only has to manage a single driver. There's no passive, reactive component in between the amp and the loudspeaker driver. Then you don't need a megabuck amp to deal with it.
All of the Linkwitz loudspeaker designs use active crossovers. Earlier designs used analog crossovers, but his last designs were all digital crossovers. There are some digital crossovers that offer DSP EQ, which allows you to tailor the total system response for the room you are in. Then you're not just limited to whatever sound your speakers give you in the room you're stuck with.
The lowest cost active crossovers are typically pro grade, from manufacturers like Behringer, dbx, Rane or even Nady. There are many manufacturers. Some of the best known home audio digital crossovers are from miniDSP.
Another major benefit is that you can use much, much lower powered amps when you use active crossovers. A lot of power is wasted having to push through a passive crossover. You really don't need to push many watts into a tweeter or mid-range driver to get a lot of level out. You could even run a single ended tube amp on your tweeter, and a mid-level tube power amp on your mid-range driver, and a solid state amp for the bass driver. You have a lot of options.
So instead of dropping $7,000 on that Threshold Stasis 8.0 power amp. You could spend much less on an active crossover and the various much more modestly priced amps of your choice.
"2) "Passive Bi-amping" is BS. You’re still delivering a full range signal to both the LF and MF/HF passive crossovers, the unused half of the signal is just turned to heat."
This is not true. There is no signal flowing through a circuit at frequencies that are filtered out by a crossover network, subject to the slope of the filter. The crossover network doesn't create an offramp for the filtered frequencies to be converted to heat.
Seems biamping in an ideal way would be using a tube amplifier for upper drivers, and solid state for bass. I believe it's widely accepted that tube amps for bass drivers presents lots of less than ideal issues.
To me using solid state across all drivers when biamping will have benefits but if you go to this trouble you might as well go all the way with tubes.
I biamp in one of my systems. I use a pair of mono amps to handle the bass and a different pair of mono amps to handle the mids and highs. The mid/high have the bass rolled off using high quality caps at the amp inputs and there is an adjustable unit to balance the bass (which goes through untouched) with the mids/highs.
This is the system that Richard Vandersteen uses and it works very well with my big Vandersteens, although many would prefer to avoid the complexity of four mono amps with an external adjustable crossover for the bass.
Does it sound better done this way? I was pleased to find that it does and the improvement warranted the extra system complexity.
Whether you would get the same gains depends entirely on your particular system.
I have actively bi-amplified my Magnepan 3-series using an external active crossover (Marchand). You have to have a decent crossover or it’s a waste.
My take was that the active bi-amping was a complete sea change in sound. As it should be since you are using an entirely different crossover network and the crossover is before and not after the amplifier, so the amplifier is freed to fully power the drivers it’s connected to. Worked very well.
But that’s because Maggies have that biamp capability without surgery. You have to take out the internal crossover network in speakers to do this right. With most speakers I’d say it probably isn’t worth the risk or effort. The speaker designer had the crossover network in mind. Magnepan clearly had active biamping in mind.
So, in limited circumstances it can be a huge improvement. But, limited circumstances. Biamping without taking out the passive crossovers is just a bit more oomph in power but at the cost of a lack of consistency. I wouldn’t do that.
NO! Because it is NEVER the THEORY that is the waste of money. It is always the application / implementation of the flawed theory that is a waste of money. Notice that all these other posters with multi-paragraph theories aren't wasting one dime of their money with their theories.
... It was interesting to me that even though the digital crossover had to do A/D D/A conversion steps, people still noticed no obvious degradation in signal. It may have to do with the people chosen for the test. Over and over I get the impression that audiophiles are particularly sensitive to things that most people don’t notice, but also peculiarly unsensitive, or at least unconcerned with things that most people can easily hear as problems. Audiophiles have learned not just to listen, but to curate particular tastes.
I’ve done a lot of bi-amping, tri-amping, all the way up to 5 way active speakers. It’s all a pain in the ass. If you’re not building your own speakers, it does seem fair enough to call it a waste of time, energy, and effort to bi-amp a speaker that already has a well designed passive crossover built in. However, you might actually like the results, so if you don’t mind the effort and expense of exploring and experimenting, then I would recommend giving it a try. My own experiences with passive bi-amping showed no obvious benefit. I was using solid state amps with plenty of current capacity, and the speakers were fairly sensitive and efficient, so that may have a lot to do with it. If you’re building your own speakers, making a passive crossover network can be a total pain, add up to a lot of expense. You can get active crossovers that include all kinds of shelving, notch filters, parametric EQ, time alignment, etc., assuming you’re willing to go digital. You can also hand pick your drivers so they don’t have any issues in the passband, and get what I think are some pretty stunning results. The active crossover lets you experiment quickly. I have read that a passive crossover never sounds highly transparent, although I think good ones are transparent enough in typical listening rooms. This is one case where people were easily able to tell the insertion of a passive network vs a pure feed in a double blind test. The testers were unable to make a passive network pure enough sounding to fool anybody. A digital active crossover could fool people. Whatever that’s worth, it does seem that for the ultimate in sound fidelity, a digital active crossover has more upside potential. Doesn’t mean you’ll like it better. Just means you’ll have a harder time telling it apart from a pure feed.
In case you’re wondering how these tests were done, they used headphones, split a signal into a low pass and a high pass, and the recombined them to a full bandwidth signal that went to the headphones. The listeners could compare direct feed to the split and re-combined feed. This allowed the passive networks to be at their best, feeding in to very stable, pure resistive loads. (I actually can’t remember if these were entirely passive or included some op-amps to make them work better. If they included op-amps some might be tempted to say that people were hearing the op-amps, but I doubt that. In any case, they were analog, line level networks.) People could easily hear the difference, even though considerable effort was made to optimize the analog networks. A passive network in a speaker is more of a mess, feeding into multiple speaker drivers with all their impedance complexities. It was interesting to me that even though the digital crossover had to do A/D D/A conversion steps, people still noticed no obvious degradation in signal. It may have to do with the people chosen for the test. Over and over I get the impression that audiophiles are particularly sensitive to things that most people don’t notice, but also peculiarly unsensitive, or at least unconcerned with things that most people can easily hear as problems. Audiophiles have learned not just to listen, but to curate particular tastes. It's not just about what is identifiably accurate or inaccurate, but what comes across as most natural and pleasing.
YES....Good Integrateds have come a long way in the last 10 years.....Also a real good tube pre amp with an upscale class D amp is a beautiful combo.....not cheap though...but great for MUSIC enjoyment.
One more thing. I am not aware of any PC based software that can do all the DSP work on the host and feed multiple DACs in WASAPI or ASIO without an external master clock. On the pro studio side, yea, not consumer level.
True bi-amping bypasses the internal crossovers so you must modify the speaker internally. You must use an external electronic crossover of which there are few analog ones ( I have used the X-Kits for main/sub) or go digital like the MiniDSP. PA crossovers like DBX and Berhringer are not HI-FI devices.
Running two amps to the two sets of binding posts on a commercial speaker is doing nothing. Nothing as it does not bypass the crossovers. Just as bogus as bi-wire. Any rumor's that dedicating amplifier frequencies have any difference is just more snake oil. If you can afford two amps, just buy a better amp and it will make an audible difference.
Sub to mains, yea electronic as the physical size and cost of a 80 Hz or so passive crossover is insane. Never mind a 20 Hz high pass to the sub. HP to the mains can make quite a difference in moderate and above distortion but is best done low level.
Mid to tweeter is where it matters. DSP allows very accurate time, phase, and eq. for any response in your room you want. Folks like Linkwitz much favored it especially with dealing with open baffles. Then again, folks like Dick Small say a competent engineer can do just fine with a passive. As I build my own speakers, I can tinker with the crossover to get it pretty good in my room. It may not be in your room so the DSP side may win there. A MiniDSP can do a lot of things that PC based software does not.
But, there are always buts, If feeding analog into a MiniDSP, you have additional A2D converters and DACs that are not exactly state of the art etc. You really need to understand measurement and psychoacoustics to know what the target needs ot be for you. Understanding DIRAC or even REW takes quite a bit of work. I think you can bet a MiniDSP USB in and PCM to external DACs out but that can raise all the same "which clock" issues as any PCM output does.
Active analog, like the X-Kits, don't have any eq. More efficient and the crossover is not impacted by the dynamics of the speaker loads and impedance. Very clean if you pick the right op-amp, but can cause turn on and off thumps if you don't handle that elsewhere. I do not know of another true high end active crossover. Bryson?
Passive is reliable, but hard to mass produce for everyone so eq needed externally. (I use JRiver) Problem is, even speakers costing several thousand dollars frequently have terrible crossovers a second grader could do better. There is zero excuse for a commercial speaker not to have a Kipple measured response within 2 dB across the BW and phase alignment within 20 or so degrees at crossover. If I can do it on a ladder in my back yard, so can big companies. Focal, Revel, Sonas Faber, Elac, and Dynaudio, are a few who do pretty well. How companies like B&W or Klipsch can be so horrible I do not know.
An odd one left is passive line level. I do this to my mains on my desktop using an appropriate size cap depending on amplifier input impedance, ( .22u in this case) to give a first order HP. Going above first order is impractical and risks distortion of the inductors. First order is almost always not steep enough for mid to woofer. I use it to take the load off my 4 inch desktops driven by a 2W amp. If trying for a second order, you can get into serious preamp impedance load issues. As I have built amplifiers and studied Self, Cordell, Leach etc, I know how to modify an amp input stage for a second order and can even modify the feedback compensation for further specific eq. Not easy unless you are an engineer. ( LtSPICE is wonderful)
I see suggestions on matching amps for range. Well, in the days of crappy amps, maybe but we can buy very very good amps now pretty cheap. Do consider how you may effect the sound by amps of different gain.
In the owners manual for my Magneplanar Tympani T-IVa loudspeakers, the company recommends bi-amping for maximum sound quality. From the manual: "By adding an additional amplifier and a crossover you can enjoy the benefits of increased dynamic range and lower distortion." Since the T-IVa features separate binding posts on the midrange/tweeter panel and dual bass panels, it’s simple.
Used stock (mono-amped), the signal from the pre-amp is sent into your power amp, which is then connected via a pair of speaker cables to the Magnepan outboard crossover. The crossover has two pair of output binding posts, one for the m/t panel, the other for the bass panels. So you need two pair of speaker cables to connect the crossover to the three panels of the T-IVa. In this scenario, the power amp sees a full-range signal.
When bi-amping, the pre-amp sends it’s signal to the after-market electronic crossover, which divides the signal into two frequency ranges, one for the m/t panel, the other the bass panels. The x/o of course has two sets of output jacks, one for each amplifier. This scenario keeps the bass frequencies out of the amplifier reproducing the mids and highs, a real benefit.
If you ever see a First Watt B4 crossover for sale used, buy it! No longer sold assembled, only as a kit. 1st/2nd/3rd/ and 4th-order filters (6/12/18/24dB per octave), adjustable in 25Hz increments from 25 to 6375Hz. All discrete components, no OpAmps or IC’s. It sold for $1500 new, a bargain.
The math never worked for me. If I can afford, say a $5K amp… I cannot afford two. I would always match amps… coherence. There is nothing worse than mixing sound qualities (a planar guy for a few decades). So, if I could afford another $5K for amplification… I would choose a $10K amp… it is going to have better dynamics, a much lower noise floor and more natural sound. So… biamping completely loses every time for me.
Some refer to active configuration simply as "bi-amping," or tri-, quad- etc. ditto, as it requires running multiple amp channels to feed each their driver section. As such it’s an inherent necessity of active and its true asset compared to just bi-amping passively. Multiple-amping as an approach should at least have its specific implementation clearly outlined to avoid confusion, i.e.: whether it’s passively or actively configured, but no doubt the latter option holds the real advantage here.
bi-amping, in my experience, is best with 4 identical channels of amplification and a speaker allowing separate low octave and upper octave inputs. the reason is my priority is always coherency first and foremost. and if the amps for upper and lower octaves are different, unless the speaker is designed with those particular amps in mind, you will always fight for optimal coherency.
I fully agree. It’s a tempting route to try and tailor amps to their respective driver sections, which I’ve tried in my 3-way active setup, and while I’m not saying it can’t be done with a careful approach (or luck) the effect of hearing what similar amps can do by comparison, to me at least, has been the most convincing and rewarding. It requires of one the seek out the amp that "has it all," or certainly has a balanced presentation that ticks off the boxes to one’s preference over the entire frequency range, in regards to resolution, tonality, power capacity, etc. Once there I’ve not since looked back; it just makes the presentation fall into place more effectively.
Ask yourself why almost nobody, including people who could easily afford it and wouldn’t mind the extra hassle, ever bi-amps home audio systems. Almost nobody
You mean actively? If so, then ask yourself how many have actually tried configuring their speakers actively. Not that many are aware of the fact that ’active’ isn’t defined preemptively as a bundled, all-in-one package, and as an outboard active solution intimidation creeps in with the thought of not least setting filter values by oneself. I can understand that, truly, but for someone who doesn’t mind the extra hassle and perhaps has a secondary system to experiment with, it’s just go ahead and do it.
No, by and large it’s not experience with actual intel to go by that keep audiophiles from venturing into outboard active bi-, tri- or whatever-amping, but rather the opposite and a bunch of conjecture. Conservatism as well, even dogma. Economy may be a factor to some, but it doesn't have to be expensive as such to go active. Use the same money on 2 or 3 cheaper, less powerful amps for an active approach. Many would be surprised to hear those cheaper, actively configured amps would likely, and rather easily hold on to the more expensive amp running the speakers passively.
Lot of interesting info, some of which I agree with, other that I don’t.
... the advantages proper bi-amping are clear: improved LF performance and dynamic range, but are most apparent only in high output (loud) applications. If your home listening never gets above 90dB or so, bi-amping is doubtfully a cost effective add-on . If you have a big system in a big room, it’s the only way to go.
I believe that’s shortchanging active a bit in its breadth and diversity of use. Yes, improved LF performance and dynamic range, but it goes beyond that to my ears with improved resolution, less smear, and an overall more uninhibited and tonally "accurate" presentation - at all volumes. Perhaps it’s the added "bonus" of active at elevated SPL’s with its better composure and precision here that to some makes for the more impressive take-away, which I cherish as well, but I find there’s much more to it than that.
Removing biamp options is a doofus move by the likes of Wilson, Magico, etc. (My guess is that went on a route where their crossover designs are suboptimal for biamping). I don’t care for their speakers eitherway. Other high-end manufacturers (TAD, Schwiekert, etc) who have stuff that sounds even better do permit biamping. No problem there!
As a practical matter, biamping is a way to put some high fidelity lower powered class A amps on the mid driver, tweeter, etc and some class AB or class H that runs cooler for the bass drivers. Running gigantic space heaters/amps in the room will inevitably make the HVAC system kick on a whole lot more ---> Higher noise floor from the airconditioner running ---> You just lost your high fidelity when the air conditioner/HVAC kicked on Sherlock.
I've considered bi-amping my JBL 1400's, whenever you bi-amp you need to modify the crossover - I believe. May be worthwhile, although crossover design is a black art IMO.
When I first went to an active x-over and tri-amping the x-over had adjustable x-over points as well as levels for the three (stereo sets) of speakers.
I defy anyone from just setting it and forgetting about it. Want DSTM to sound like it does live? Bump that bass way up, and yes its not what the mastering engineers were shooting for, but what the hell do they know.
Favorite track has bloated bass turn that stuff way down. Got to the point where I was taking notes on individual tracks as to volume on x-over and overall on pre-amp. Madness is the right word for it.
Only a waste if you ultimately don't like it, or don't really notice a major improvement....which can lead to equipment swaps on the mobius loop of that scenario....
One can find self micro-tweaking settings from selection to selection;
I Triamped my Boston a400 and they sounded like different speakers .
highs very detailed , more solid bass. I used an active crossover .My energy Veritas 2.8 are passively triamped, the manual even says not use external active crossover because the 2.8’s have a complex impedance smoothing cross over.
With passive triamping, it only delivers more power to the speakers, you don’t get the benefits of an active crossover.
Like I said, some speakers do great with it. I might get some new cards for active xover and triamp my GNP Valkeryies .
I think speakers with simple crossovers have more promise triamped than ones
with complex crossovers.
”Ask yourself why almost nobody, including people who could easily afford it and wouldn't mind the extra hassle, ever bi-amps home audio systems. Almost nobody”
No speakers offer inputs for active biamping because it’s incredibly easy to accidentally hook up the woofer to the tweeter input and destroy a tweeter!
I have learned that Wilson and others who do not offer biampable speakers it's because they don't trust the world to do it properly. So they don't want you to screw up their speakers.
I am a big proponent of doing tube anp mono to the upper range drivers and solid state to the bass for each side.
wilson of all companies should be allowing this capability. You can get it if you order it special. Many upscale restaurants charge extra if you want your sandwich cut into four pieces. Kind of like Biamping a meal.
Alright found out some information about my preamp and the bi-amp mode it has.
It’s pretty neat when turned on.
Within the preamp (setup in the setup menu) and before the amp, the preamp sends out each channel as a high and low signal (two channels for each speaker and a total of four channels for two HF & two LF signals). When connected properly the LF channel doesn’t receive a HF signal and vice versa.
What Marantz does is separates the one channel for just low frequencies sent out and another separate channel for just the high frequencies. 👍🏻
I have never tried bi-amping my system. I have noticed that many of the very high end speaker manufacturers do not have speaker post for bi-amping. If companies like Wilson, and Magico are not allowing this, can we tell the difference.
I vertically bi-amp my system. Two AGD Tempo stereo amps, each driving a Fyne F1-8. I compared this to using a single Tempo and there is no question that bi-amping here was a big improvement - the same kind of improvement you would get from going from a stereo amp to mono blocks. But when I compared this vertical bi-amp setup to using one channel of each Tempo the improvement was not as distinct. My 2¢.
If done right, bi or even tri amping is the way to go. But I repeat if done right. If you have ever been to a large concert or even board meetings are always bi or tri amped. But as others have said, it’s not as simple as plugging speakers into two different amps.
I have been tri-amping for years and years. Just changed out the ARC amps for four Pass amps. Two X260.8 mono blocks and two XA30.8 stereo amps.
Out of the pre-amp into a Marchand electronic x-over and to the amps. The x260.8(s) run the woofers. The XA30.8(s) run the mids and the tweets.
The Hartley Reference has no internal x-overs and 3 sets of connections on each speaker. Personally I think it sounds tremendous, but of course I do...its mine.
I incline to view Avanti1960’s favorably, as it matches my own experience. This is what we are calling ‘passive biwiring’. Panzerwagen states unequivocally that “the unused half of he signal is just turned into heat”. But is that really all that’s happening? If so, why have Avanti and I heard benefits from using this technique with separable passive crossovers in our speakers? Maybe the passive HPF presents the amp an easier load with less back EMF, allowing it to more optimally drive the MR and tweeter….
Some of us kind of do it already with an addition of a sub-woofer. We also have enjoyed the time, expense and fun this can be to get it right.
As far as waste of time, you will never know yourself if this is BS or not.
Clarification.
1, You stated, "I'm USING two identical amps in a vertical bi-amp configuration." Sounds like you are already doing it. ??? Which stage of this are you?
2. You mentioned the Internal Crossover. You should Not have to touch the internal crossover. Are you thinking of Active Biamping? If so, Stop. You will be defeating all the reasons you chose those speakers. A Whole different very ugly animal.
I would suggest Bi Wiring first. You are going to need these cables anyway for your Biamp endeavors. If your speakers are not biwireable, you're full stop. Or you have to Make your speakers biwireable. Then buy and install another amp.
I believe that you get value from bi-amping speakers that are designed to be bi-amped and have a proper complimentary crossover- preferably made by the speaker manufacturer for that particular set of speakers.
Because there are so many variables in "complex" amplification I'd start by listening to the above before you buy.
I recently bought a set of Bryston Model Ts. I listened to them bi-amped with a matching crossover. They sounded wonderful. When I got them home my ARC VT130 couldn't keep up with the speaker's demands at higher volume and the bass was a bit mushier than when they were bi-amped. I bought Bryston's crossover and a pair of their solid state 7B's to drive the woofers and I drive the mids/tweets with my ARC tube amp. Viola! They sounded as good (actually a little better thanks to the tube amp) as they did in the retailer's listening room.
Moral of the story: Listen before you buy and be prepared to spend a lot more money than you hoped to get it just right. I've got my wife and car up for sale now to recover the added costs of bi-amping.
One of the reasons some high end manufacturers don't offer bi-wiring/biamping capability is because it means that those who don't use the facility end up having to use jumpers to connect the two sets of speaker terminals.
Bi-wiring/amping introduces a whole lot of extra complexity - double the cable runs, possibly the use of splitters etc.
Personally, I prefer the approach of just buying a better amp - preferably a pair of monblocs.
Ask yourself why almost nobody, including people who could easily afford it and wouldn't mind the extra hassle, ever bi-amps home audio systems. Almost nobody.
2) "Passive Bi-amping" is BS. You’re still delivering a full range signal to both the LF and MF/HF passive crossovers, the unused half of the signal is just turned to heat.
3) Horizontal Bi-Amping allows for hybrid amp usage e.g. SS Bass Amp / VT Mid/Highs. If the concern is power supply demand, that’s an amp issue; bi-amping has no impact, per se. Get a bigger amp if needed.
4) Vertical Bi-Amping uses CH 1 of the first am for LF and CH 2 for Mid/Highs. In theory minimizing incongruities dues to differences in amp design.
ALL bi-amping requires a line level crossover to provide LP and HP as well as level matching functionality.
@knotscott said "Most active crossovers can’t address problem areas within the drivers like passive crossovers can. They only act as high, low, or bandpass filters, no notch filters, no shelving networks, no zobels, etc. Hook an active crossover to a driver with issues, and you can have a mess that can’t be compensated. A really good passive crossover with high quality parts can sound amazing. Passive crossovers can be more complicated to design well, and many use cheap parts that effects performance." This is by and large true. There are two mitigations however: use a DSP that can provide notch and shelving as well as crossover functionality or connect the amp post-crossover and pre-equalizing elements. This preserves the compensations, but may not easily be accomplished with some crossover designs. I probably would back out at that point, unless the MF/HF access is provided where necessary by the manufacturer.
All that said, there are two major advantages of vertical and horizontal bi-amping done with an electronic crossover: Improved dynamic range, by as much as 6 dB. 2 - 50W amps can deliver the dynamics of the same speaker driven by a 400W. More realistically, a 75W LF and 25W MF/HF - which argues for vertical bi-amping. Active speakers like Genelec G-Series, KEF LS-50 and LS-60 Wireless or JBL 4305 and 4329 are a good examples of this type of asymmetrically powered active speaker design.
The other advantage is eliminating the both the LF series inductor(s) and their associated DC resistance, which destroys woofer damping and control as well as keeping the back EMF from the LF driver away from the MF/HF elements, reducing any distortion, and improving power handling. The latter two are easily audible.
It should come as no surprise that virtually all high-performance live sound systems are bi-amped, tri-amped or even quad-amped, and have been for over 50 years. The systems I co-designed and worked with in the mid-late 70s sprung from the Altec Voice of the Theater tradition, eventually using subwoofers bins under the stage crossed over between 80-120 Hz, LF boxes from there to 800Hz and large 4" compression drivers from 800- 6Khz both vertical line arrays, and 1" compression drivers from 6KHz up, all hung, flown from the venue ceiling . We went through a number of amps, beginning with the 150 W/Ch Crown DC-300A (not roadworthy), An Altec 200W/Ch 9440A (not reliable) before settling on the now-legendary Yamaha P2200.
Two final notes - the advantages proper bi-amping are clear: improved LF performance and dynamic range, but are most apparent only in high output (loud) applications. If your home listening never gets above 90dB or so, bi-amping is doubtfully a cost effective add-on . If you have a big system in a big room, it’s the only way to go.
Virtually all subwoofers on the market today are actively bi-amped, although few have proper HP filtering, relying instead on the ’Bass Management’ capabilities of the preamp or AV processor. Low end subwoofers often have speaker level connections to the subwoofer, then pass-through connections to the main speakers. This is a very economics-driven and compromised solution.
Why doesn’t Wilson allow for biamping of their speakers? Seems really odd with all those drivers in use. Even with all their glorious crossover designs, it would seem to make sense to allow use of a tube amplifier for the upper drivers and solid state for bass drivers. Anyone who buys these speakers is probably very versatile with all of biamp benefits yet Wilson doesn't do it. Same question for a lot of other upper end speakers that choose not be biampable.
I would bi-amp. I agree with @knotscott, he gives good advice about passive bi-amping. I have no experience with passive bi-amping, as my speakers can only be actively bi-amp. When I horizontally bi-amped my speakers, with an analog active crossover design by the same manufacturer (of the speakers), it brought my speakers three notches above the passive crossover in sound quality. A good external crossover is very important when actively bi-amping. Also you said you have two amps then just do it, you might like it. 😎
That said, passive or active bi-amping should not be undertaken without first asking the speaker manufacturer’s advice.
Two identical amps....one for each channel has less crosstalk, and a dedicated power supply on each channel....similar benefits as mono blocks. Any amp should benefit from that scenario. If you use two identical stereo amps, you can use one channel for the woofer, and the other for the mids/tweeter on both sides. A channel that doesn't have to deal with the stress of driver a woofer is usually going to be better...how much is audible is an unknown, but its a better situation for the amp. I don’t see it as a total waste at all. It can really improve the soundstage, and dynamics of a system, and sometimes clarity other characteristics, depending on other factors. How much improvement you can hear depends on many things. It may not be worth the improvement to spend a lot for another identical amp, but if you already have them, or can pick up another at a reasonable price, there’s definitely some benefit.
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