Biamping Triode Tubes No Feedback With Solid State


Hi, I was wondering if anyone has tried to biamp an integrated SET tube amp with a solid state power amp. I have been listening to amps that were really nice, like the Viva Solista, the Cary SEI 300, the McIntosh 2275 or even the Sun Audio. They are great integrated tube amps but with little wattage some of them lack of punch when it comes to bass. I was thinking to partner them with a warm solid state power amp (i.e. Gamut or McIntosh, I guess MOSFET would be best). Does it make sense? Would it be flawed sonically: How would you connect the whole thing to the cross over? Would I need active or passive cross over?

For speakers I am thinking Triangle Celius, Wilson Sophias or Sonus Faber Grand Piano.

Thanks,

Josep
josep_hernandez

Showing 2 responses by matrix

Unless you can match the input specs. and power differential, in otherwords if your top end of the speakers are like 95 db and you have 50 watt triodes, and the bottom end woofers are 89 db with like 300 watt solid state and all it is matchable, its near impossible to biamp a system using different amplifiers on one speaker together with Passive Crossovers, those are hypothetical #'s by the way... The only way to achieve this goal is with An active bi-amped system running your preamp into an Electronic 2, 3, or 4 way crossover and being able to handle different volume levels and crossover frequencys feeding each amp into each set of drivers... this would also require stripping the Speaker of all passive components(filters and crossovers) and leave the drivers only with straight wire to binding posts or out of the cabinet all together back to each amp. I could be wrong but this is the only way to do it right, without dissapointment.
Well yes you could keep the simple tweeter circuit in there true, and go 2 way bi-amp I was just simplifying, bottom line it gets tuff and expensive to do it for real. and the efficiency of running 2 totally different amps for bi-amping drops quickly with cost and simplicity of system.

The only real way is to go with 2 Already excellent matching stereo amps and Verticle Bi-amp then you could leave all the passive components alone.. but this is not what you are looking for, you want basically to turn the lower woofs into solid state Sub's(not literaly but essentially) and the top to run on the sweetest tubes, this cannot be done without a very good Active Crossover and full active bi-amp system, with speaker modification. and even then getting it all to be peak level and optimize all other problems gets complex sometimes.