Better Way To Biamp?


I was curious if you agoners will help me out here. I have a Mc207 with 2 channels powering each B&W 802N. I was just told that Im not actually getting 400 watts to the speaker. The way it was explained made sence i just never put much thought into it. I was wondering if they made some kind of crossover to put inbetween the amp and pre? So I would get the full 200 designated to the lower frequency and 200 to the high? I am just looking to get a lil more spl out of my system. I am finally very happy with it. So I would like to keep what I have just make it better if possible. Thanks Matt
mattblueg35

Showing 1 response by whoaru99

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.