Bi-Amping

If your preamp has balance control, you can swap sides and figure which one is better.

This would probably be somewhat impractical as a separate component would be needed for L & R spkr.

Exactly-- the reason I came up with the idea is that I have a reverse box hooked up to my RCA outputs from my DAT that changes the L & R stereo channels.

I was hoping to configure the same sort of thing so as to compare amps on the same spkrs w/o actually changing the spkr wire hook-ups. Does anyone know if such a component exists?

Thanks for comments all.

I thought that was your question, rather than biamping which is using two amps at once. You cant just hook up two amps to one speaker, as the signal from one amp will feed into the other amp through the combined speaker terminal connection. If you are trying to compare two amps, you need some sort of switching box to isolate one from the other so only one is hooked up to the speaker at a time.

Apparently my prev conception of Biamping was incorrect. My hope was to hook up a Sansui 2000x & a Denon 395 to the same speakers at the same time for comparison. r

I agree with all the responses. But why are you starting off with 2 amps? Do you have a large room to fill or is the biamping for less noise/distortion reasons?
There is also horizontal and vertical biamping to the speakers. Please explain what you are attempting to achieve.

You are facing the following 3 scenarios:

1. Two identical amps is ideal and can be used without electronic crossover. There are amps that will have line level output terminals (XLR or RCA) that make things easier by connecting them one to another otherwise you'll have to use Y-conector at your preamp output. Preamp might as well have more than one output set which will make it suitable for bi-amplification

2. Two different amps with different gains and output power. In this case if you just connect them to the speaker binding posts, you'll get overloaded or undefined bass depending which side the more powerful amp is connected to. For common sense sake we can assume that more powerful amp is connected to the low binding posts. The necessity of either electronic crossover or volume control is necessary. If volume control is used on larger poweramp, you simply will have a constant problem of tonal balance and instead of adjusting preamp volume control, you'll always have to adjust your bottom amp 'by ear' that will never be precise.

3. Opt out of biamping and get more powerful amp. THAT's my choice after trying out both above.

I have a friend who ran a tube amp on the high post and solid state for the low. Something didn't click so he sold both amps and purchased a more powerful and slightly more expensive solid state amp and used a very good jumper. In the end this worked out much better than the two dissimilar amps.

. . . not sure you really want this to be your primary criteria for speaker purchase. I would not. Rather, pick the speakers that sound like and look like what you really want, and cost w/i your budget. In all likelihood they will have dual binding posts (most do) and be "biampable" (most are). You can verify this as your last "tie breaking" decision.

I suggest you also read up on biamping. Search the archives here and you will find extensive discussion. It sounds like you are considering "passive biamping" which rarely produces a benefit as you will read in the archives. "Active biamping" is a whole 'nother undertaking and since it removes the crossover, you may not need to worry about whether the speakers have dual binding posts.

They may not be described as bi-ampable but all the speakers that have two sets of binding posts,one set for mids/treble and another set for bass are bi-ampable. There are many many speakers with this style of binding post, most have a jumper strap connecting the two sets. If there is no strap then most people used jumper wires, very few actually bi-amp as appealing as this may seem. Do a search for the complexities involved and why most people don't do it..