Bi-amping????

Whoaru99 and Gregm have filled in some of the gaps. I have learned a little more myself.

Here is a popular link to an explanation of biamping and passive vs. active crossover configurations.

http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm

Having too much power is not necessarily a problem, just use it judiciously. It gives the amp "headroom", allowing for a lot of sound without stress on the amp. It will keep the amp from clipping at higher volumes which destroys tweeters.

My little Arcams don't create enough juice to hurt the Magnepan tweeters. The 1.6's also have a fuse in line with the tweeter section. I am not sure the Paradigm does.

Hope this makes sense?

BTW - The next thing I want to do is add an active crossover. This will allow me to bypass the passive crossovers, which seem to be generally regarded as a weak link in the 1.6's. It should also lessen the load on the Arcams, allowing them to do the best they are capable of.

Happy Holidays

Jim

Dle,

I think Whoaru99 has got you to where you need to be. But, please read and understand all that is written about using an active or passive crossover before your amplifiers and bypassing your speakers crossovers.

You cannot bypass your speaker crossovers without some sort of frequency attenuation before your amplifiers (active or line level passive crossover). Forgive me if I am repeating something you know, better for me to be an idiot, than have you bust a couple of speaker tweeters.

Jim S.

Ah, the voice of reason. Not as much fun, but apropos.

Whoaru99, thanks.

Jim S.

What you are describing is vertical biamping. Take 2 identical 2 channel amplifiers and use one channel of one amp for low frequency output to a certain speaker and the other channel of that same amp for high freq. to the same speaker. You mirror the setup for the other speaker with the 2nd amp.

If my thinking is coherant today, you either need to have 2 preamp outs from your preamp (2 right channel outs and two left channel outs), or some way to bridge the amp input signal to both channels at the amplifier (some power amps have this capabilty with a jumper or switch), or you will need "double terminated" (there is a proper term for these) interconnects from your preamp to the power amps.

Even passive biamping made a tremendous difference in my system compared to using the stock jumpers or a biwire setup. I have Magnepan 1.6's (hard to drive) with Arcam Alpha 10 amplifiers (modest power of 100w into 8 ohms).

It is definitely worth a try. If you think it through before hooking everything up you shouldn't do any damage. If you turn the gain all the way up, there is no guarantee that the speakers will handle the load though. That is a different question.

Jim S.

David,

If I understand your question, no, that is not going to double the power into the speaker. I am going by what I have read (here and other places) and gleaned from studying associated literature, I am not an EE, but this is my understanding.

There is an amplifier bridging technique that puts both channels of the amp in series, doubling, or exponentially increasing the power of the now mono amp. Some amps are designed for this (Classe') and some will get unstable (my Arcams).

What you are trying to do is not that kind of bridging. You are trying to duplicate the preamps output into two channels for each side (and "bridging" may be an incorrect term in this circumstance). You may have impedance issues, duplicating the preamp signal into two inputs, that will affect the sound (tilt it one way or another) but I don't know enough electronics theory to predict the outcome using your components. I can't imagine it causing any damage.

What vertical biamping is supposed to do in a passive or active configuration is reduce the load on the amp power supplies. The bass generates the heavy load and that load is now divided between the two amplifliers. Most amplifliers use a single power supply to drive both channels.

What I meant by "if you turn up the gain" is the Paradigms seem fairly efficient and might not take full power from the amps. Don't turn it up all the way at once.

There are a lot of folks here that really do understand the theory behind these concepts and you can requery if you have concerns.

P.S. - don't forget to remove the jumpers on the speaker terminals.

Jim S.