I have recently bi-amped my system and the mids and hi's seemed to overpower the low end. The amps are identical so I just turned the volume down on the mid /hi amp. Is this normal in some systems or in a more perfect setup should I be making other tweaks to get the volume set on max for both?
My primary speakers are Snell Type D's. I own two Nikko Alpha 220 amps, which are 120wpc, similar wattage to Blueskiespbd's NAD 2700's. I have biamped the D's with one amp powering the bass and one the highs. I did not experience any loudness variation between the bass and highs, as compared to just one amp. The sound was quite similar to using just one of the amps, but the bass was somewhat tighter and the overall sound was indeed slightly better.
Bottom line, biamping should work.
I must say that the Snells perform so well with one amp, that I'm not sure the second is worth the effort and right now I'm only using one.
Either way, even with the Snell D's, the soundstage, vocals and bass are incredible. Every time I sit back and do some serious listening my eyes are deceived because the singer is not in the room.
OK so Snell says biampinng is fine but active crossovers require more expertise than I have. For now I will concentrate on room tweaks and gear tweaks since there are many known issues there. Back to the salt mine.
My experience is that passive biamping does produce an improvement, but it is not huge relative to the cost of buying another amp.
I've had similar experience. I've tried many amp combinations on 2 separate systems and found one case where biamping produced improvements over one amp material enough (to my ears) to keep it running in biamp mode. This is running vertical biamp configuration driving Von Schweikert VR4-III's. I also tried this with Totem Mani-2's. In both cases I asked the speaker mfg if I would be better off using biamping vs one larger amp I was trying to decide if I should buy a larger monoblock Eagle 11 vs using my Eagle 4 amps. Totem said one large monoblock would be best (which I confirmed). Albert Von Schweikert said vertical biamping would be better. The VR4's are 2 separate modules and he recommends passive biamping. I've tried many other amps and none have performed better than the Eagle 4s in vertical passive biamp.
It will be interesting and worthwhile to hear what Snell recommends . . . but I suspect you may have proven the point already.
Might the difference in loudness be due to differences in the sensitivity of the driver(s) handling mids and highs vs that (those) handling low frequencies?
My experience is that passive biamping does produce an improvement, but it is not huge relative to the cost of buying another amp. This is because you are still using the speaker's crossover. However, if you already have two amps, then it would be worthwhile to give it a try since your speakers have two sets of binding posts. Where you get a huge improvement, however, is when you go to active biamping. But this requires the addition of an electronic crossover and the removal of the speaker's crossover. Stripped of the technical lingo, the improvement is due to the better control of the drivers and the precise separation of the frequencies going to the drivers. The problem is that the speaker designer designed the speaker as an integrated package: cabinet, drivers, crossover, etc. If the speaker wasn't designed to upgraded to active operation, you could get unpredictable results by replacing the designer's crossover with another one. For this reason, I would suggest that if a person were to do this, the crossover they add should try to match the crossover frequency and slope of the original crossover in the speaker.
The poster above who says that you are not biamping does not appear to understand the difference between passive and active biamping. Apparently he has some other issues too that he needs to work out.
I can't easily explain what you are finding if you have two identical amps that are working properly. You have no difference when vertically biamping so this tells me that the amps are probably fine. But the difference does emerge when you horizontally biamp. Because of this, I'm inclined to think that there is something going on in the speaker's crossover. Perhaps these speakers aren't meant to be biamped because of whatever is going on in the crossover. The double binding posts may be for bi-wiring, but not necessarily bi-amping, though that seems a bit odd. I don't know. Perhaps you might want to contact Snell to see what they have to say about having their speaker's biamped. You also might try reposting a thread with a title containing something like: "Bi-Amping Snell speakers". This might attract some posts specifically from other Snell owners who have done this.
RE: Bob the amps do have volume controls for each channel. I am currently doing some testing tonight with the Rives cd and my SPL meter to replot the curve from my original baseline since I have moved the speakers and made some other tweaks. What frequency shoud I use for the test you are thinking of?
Re; Bach The current crossovers are untouched. The snells I believe us woffers in parallel so I do not know if active crossovers would make much of a difference?
Dear Blueskiespbd: In what may seem to be an attempt to toss the cat among the pigeons, I can assure you that this question may seem a moot point, but I some of us are anxious to hear the answer. Did you physically remove the passive crossover in your speaker cabinets or did you leave them in and simply bypass the parts?
Thanks for the suggestion Bob reynolds. I have moved the wiring so that one channel of each amp runs the top end while the other channel runs the bottom. Sounds good but I still have the mid/hi channels turned down about 2 clicks.I will do some more testing and will read up on the active crowwover info.
Doesn't sound right to me. If anything, I might have expected the bottom to be more prevalent. Switch the amps around to see if the same thing happens with the other amp on the top.
it sounds to me that while your amps are the same, they may not be matched for some reason. Did you connect in vertical or horizontal config? If Horizontal (ie one amp driving mid/tweet, the other driving bass), try vertical. If one side is louder then your amps output aren't matched.
the system is as follows: Snell CV speakers, pair NAD 2700 amps, Linn Kolektor pre, Rotel cd, Straightwire IC and speaker wire, APC conditioner, dedicated circuit, room is sound treated and trapped
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