Bi-amping a MC275 with my MC452.


Opinions, been wanting to purchase a MC275vl to bi-amp with my MC452. Has anyone tried this or something similar. Would keep the 452 for bass and the 275 for the mids and tweeters. I have read an old post that 275s don't match up well with horned speakers. I have Cornwall ivs. Has anyone found this to be  true                      Also Mcintosh rep.told me I would need another unit to control volume for both amps. If true what alternates  can I use. The Mc. version is 5k which is not in my budget at this time. Thanks for your help

eoj4952

Showing 1 response by knotscott

It’s always subjective, but I don’t know of any reasons why the 275 wouldn’t mate well with your horns. Lots of people like tubes with horn drivers, and they give the option of rolling tubes to tailor the sound to your liking. I consider tubes on the mids/highs and solid state on the woofers to be the best of both worlds, but there are many variables in play (like the specifics of the amps and what frequency range each is covering).

Depending on what preamp your using, it should be possible to split the output signal to two amps with the 275 on the mids/tweeters, and the 452 driver the woofers (known as horizontal passive bi-amping), assuming the amps have similar gain. If not, then you’d need a way to control the volume of each amp. It’s worth a try IMO.

Some may tell you that bi-amping is waste unless you bypass the passive crossovers and go with full active crossovers. Both crossover types have pros and cons, and active crossovers can certainly be beneficial in some applications, but if your speakers currently sound good using a single stereo amp and passive crossovers, and you’re not prepared to modify your speakers extensively, they should still sound good using two amplifiers....hopefully it’ll sound like an improvement to you, but that’s subjective.

My bi-amp setup is hybrid, running monoblock tube amps on the midbass and tweeters with passive crossovers, and a solid state integrated amp on the woofers using an active low pass crossover @ 80hz. It definitely made a nice improvement IMHO.

Good luck!