Better Way To Biamp?

The power is the same with passive and active biamping.

Active biamping will produce the best results, but will require speaker alterations + an electronic crossover.

My suggestion would be to contact Krell on doing this with their KBX crossover. For me, they designed everything for my original Matrix 800's.

Richard

Thanks Drrdiamond. I am curious what would something like that cost ballpark? The Krell stuff would be the only mfg that I would consider besides what I have. The dynamics that Ive heard from Krell equipment is something else. I know I should of just went that route but I always wanted Mc gear. I noticed you dont have a system up in your profile. I would like to see what you got. Matt

One popular active crossover that sells used here all the time is the Bryston 10B,very good from what I hear.
George

I use the Krell FPB300 for the high end and the KSA300S for the bass.

If you can find a used KBX, Krell charges $400 for the customized board, installed. (although you can intall the board yourself, I would NOT recommend it, as they will do a check of the whole unit and especially for any DC output and make proper adjustments)

I don't know the current price for a new KBX.

Actively biamping my speakers was the single biggest improvement that I have made to my system.

Richard

Biamping with 200 high and 200 low is not like having 400 watts to the speaker.

The low freqs require nearly all the power going to a speaker so bi-amping with 200x2 is only marginally better pwer wise than just 200 watts total.

I'm just making an example here because I have no way to know for sure the real numbers. So, in the case of 200x2 biamping, you have 200 watts to the woofers. Some of the other 200 watts goes to the tweeters, but they don't require much power so maybe only 25 watts (remember just guestimating) of that is actually used.

Now put a single 200 watt amp on that same speaker and you see that the woofer now may get 175 watts and the tweeter still takes the 25 watts. So, as you see, no significant difference in output.

Do you know that it takes 10 times more power to make the music twice as loud with the same set of speakers? Further, doubling power at best with provide only a 3db increase in volume which is only just a small increase in sound level.

If you want noticeably (meaningfully??) louder, you will need to make a LARGE increase in amp power or get more efficient speakers, or both.

for a while iwas biamping using two identical amps one on top the other driving the low end of the speaker untlil i noticed that my midbas was in fact better with one amp. bi-amp with the passive cx inside the speaker is a waste and in some cases may produce problems because of cx configuration . you do not get much more , theamp still has to amplifier the full signal it receives at the input even you wasting a portion of it at the output.
To get the dynamic benefits of biamping you have to go active with the inconvenience that this entails. A better way to achieve this is to relieve your speaker of the last 3 octave using subs from say 20to 60 rolling off passively for the top and cutting actively the high from the subs donot make mistake even excellent speakers can get help from a sub when it is properly done. i have piega C-40 and i use sub i only do two channels by the way.

I think all these comments are correct, and to summarize:
1. Single-amped, it'll take double the power you now have to make your speakers a LITTLE louder.
2. Active biamping is expensive and perhaps-neverending in twiddling this and that, and to benefit from active filtering, you essentially have to remove the original crossover.
3. Since your 802s are 3-ways (or even 4-ways?) with bass-only in the bottom 'half', try passsive biamping with a different, gutsy SS amp on the bottom or even another 207.
4. Adding a subwoofer AND using a high-pass filter of maybe 80 to 100Hz may well be the best solution to your problem.

Of course I can't even imagine the listening levels you're already achieving, but if you want to further deafen yourself, have at it! :-)
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