do bridged amps give the same sound as non bridged

Just a note here, I am using that particular amp in my current setup. Rather than bridge all 3 channels I am using the left and right for the first 3 pairs to bi-amp my mains and center channel. I am running b&w 604 s3's and it gets very loud with no distortion that I can hear.

Partly plagiarized from the FAQ I co-wrote at the Audio Asylum:

"Bridging is the summing of two channels to give one higher output channel. Because of the summing however, the speaker impedance is seen as half of its normal value. In other words, an 8-ohm speaker becomes a 4-ohm speaker load, and a 4-ohm speaker becomes a 2-ohm speaker load. Speaker impedance ratings are nominal only. Actual impedance may dip to a much lower value through part of its range. When an amp's current load has been doubled due to bridging, it can often fail to provide the required amount of current into the load. Sonic effects include harshness in the midrange and highs, and thin bass. In almost all situations therefore, biamping with similar amps will result in better sound quality than bridging."

The other problem with bridging is that it cuts an amp's damping factor in half, resulting in looser control of the woofer and generally sloppier sound. So to answer the question, yes, bridging sacrifices some quality in exchange for a few dB's of extra level.

My advice is to buy one better amp, rather than two lesser quality amps, but "better" doesn't really have anything to do with higher watts.

Fishcall, I made the same question some time ago when I relaized that the sound was better off a single amp than two of them bridged, someone also mentioned at that time the distortion issue when bridging.

Try buying something with a little more power and avoid bridging.

Regards,

Bridging means that each side sees a low impedance, 4 ohms if your speaker is 8 ohms. 2 ohms if it is a 4 ohm speaker.
I note that amp distortion specs usually increase for lower impedance loads.

My comments about this is that as the power is doubled (fed to the speaker) the amp has a better control of the speakers requirements. So 130 W is better than 60 W in terms of "control" per se because it can generate more current easily when the transducer requires it than when the only available power is half of that.

For both amps rated at 130 W to sound the same with your speakers is really hard to predict. Yes they are equal in power but you have to consider many other things like damping factor, storage capability (caps), frequency response, transient response (i.e. how fast, long and stable can it generate max current over a period of time without the possibility of clipping or introducing some form of distortion to the signal path), power supply designs and stability etc.

Bridging the amp makes the power higher because you are now using two sets of "storage" tanks (for analogy purposes Torroidal Xformer, or output caps for each channel is now doubled) combined compared to a single xfrmer and single set of output caps. So in essence, a properly designed bridge amp should sound better than when it is not bridged because of this which goes back to the "control" factor again.

Just my thoughts. I could be wrong but this is what I remember when researching this issues.

Hope this helps....