A bridged solid state amp will see half the speaker impedance and output twice the current into the speaker load. The penalty is hotter running conditions for the pair of amps. Tube amps cannot be bridged. Instead a stereo tube amp can drive one speaker by paralleling the outputs of both channels. This gives twice the voltage and current into a single speaker. A McIntosh 275 paralleled as a mono amp will output 150 watts and twice the current.
Bridged amps vs stereo vs monoblocks.
I don’t have any real issue, but I’m curious about how the bridging of an amp functions. I have a 80 W stereo amplifier, which can be bridged to provide 220 or so power into a load. This amp also has a hefty power supply which makes it work beautifully with my Magnepan’s. However, I used to have two of these amps bridged. One of which I lost due to it breaking so i replaced with an unbridged stereo amp, which I’m only using one channel. So what a strange hodgepodge of connections, right? It sounds great and I am have no problems but I’m curious if I was doing some thing that is easily changed to provide benefit. Mixing two different amps for example. Or I read when an amp is bridged it is sensing a four ohm load as a two ohm load and therefore what does that even mean? Also, using one part of a stereo amp is odd, but does that change anything, especially if there’s one power supply? Curious, if there any principles I could learn about this from those more familiar with those equations thanks!
Showing 3 responses by jasonbourne71
@dain : I recommend changing the bridged amp back to stereo and using only one channel for one speaker. As you are already doing with the other amp and speaker. Because each two-channel amp has a single power transformer this will benefit both amps by not stressing the power supplies. |