Horizontal vs Vertical biamping

Analog XO like those mentioned are still compromised, just like a passive, in that they have fixed orders and no delay.

IF one listens digital sources, DSP makes so much more sense:

• time alignment
• infinite slope capabilities
• driver anomaly correction
• room correction

dbx and the like are inflexible with fixed orders. On some speakers the drivers lose their blend and sound like individual drivers in a box.

+1 bdp24 - excellent 

If you don’t want the best like First Watt or Bryson, Ashley, TDM and DBX make some excellent crossovers for less money. You can always upgrade to First Watt or Bryson after you get your feet wet in bi-amping. Maybe even tri or quadamping like I am.😁

Bryston makes a good active x/o, but Nelson Pass makes a great one. If it is too rich for your blood, look for his also very fine First Watt B4. MUCH more versatile than the Bryston, and no op-amps or integrated circuits (100 percent discrete circuitry). Completely analogue as well. No longer available assembled (kit only), but very occasionally available used.

Not sure your Legacy’s would see the same dramatic improvement.

Read the active vs passive XO link above.

With amp connected directly to the driver, the amplifier is in total control of the motion. If there is ’iron’ and ’paper’ in the circuit, the driver sees a very high impedance at the XO Hz and is "flopping about like a fish out of water" 😉

I tried both horizontal and vertical bi-amping with identical 2 channel amplifiers. Couldn't really tell a difference or even a difference from a single amplifier.. Stayed vertical, the wiring is cleaner. After I got my set of Magnepan 1.6's, bi-amped vertically for a couple years, then took the plunge into an active crossover with a Bryston 10B removing the passive crossovers. Huge difference, for the better. Started with close to stock frequencies and slopes, but after fiddling around, ended up preferring different settings.

Two points - the 1.6's of that era were known for cheap passive crossover components. Not sure your Legacy's would see the same dramatic improvement. The second point is - I'm electrically challenged. Although the 1.6's are very simple, I had to do a lot of research to implement active, and if I can do it, anyone can.

Jim S.

Not only that, but it's my experience that while the physical XO Hz & order may be known, they are only a starting point. Better performance may be obtained with active XO Hz & order quite different from stock parameters.

Good point, most have found this to be true with the apogee speakers.

Not only that, but it's my experience that while the physical XO Hz & order may be known, they are only a starting point. Better performance may be obtained with active XO Hz & order quite different from stock params.

That's what I like about apogee speakers, they are already set up for active you just have to change a few wires around. There is also a lot of info on using an active crossover with them, you are correct though most speakers aren't set up like this and not a lot of info on crossover settings.

Why do you have to remove the passive components from the speakers, don't you just have to bypass them and can still leave them in the speaker cabinet?

You could leave them in the box, but they should be disconnected from the drivers. You could bypass them, but the possibility of screwing up is not zero. In the case of the Legacy SE, the speakers should likely be tri-amped as there is an XO between the mid and tweet. If done properly, the speaker was voiced to compensate for driver/XO interaction.

Something like the Dayton is pretty basic and the A/D is probably quite audible.

XO & D/A should be implemented in the digital domain. However, doing that properly is not trivial for what looks to be a fairly complex XO in the SE:

@backdoor,

In my opinion active, bi amping is sometimes hard to implement, and the user is often left to his own devices. It should not be undertaken without first asking the manufacturer's advice. See crossover below: 

Mike

https://www.passlabs.com/legacy_products/xvr-1

When going active, you are adding another preamp circuit (the active HP/LP filter) so all the same quality variables come into play as with choosing a preamp. That said, modern DSP units are pretty amazingly transparent in my experience.  Wet your toes with the Dayton Audio DSP-408, which is versatile enough for home or car audio, has parametric EQ, and costs close to nothing. 

Why do you have to remove the passive components from the speakers, don't you just have to bypass them and can still leave them in the speaker cabinet?

I have not rolled tubes in the amps yet. These amps are the “dark” version of the st 100s and they come with some pretty nice tubes. 

Look for a bryston  10b crossover.  

When multi-amping with active XO, you  M U S T  remove the passive XO components from the speakers.

Regarding deltas between horizontal and vertical, there are multiple possible combinations of amp channels and speaker drivers in each configuration. The tube combinations of 2x ST100 are astronomical. Adding in OPT, driver and passive XO part tolerances, there are enough combinations to have a different system every day for the rest of time.

In theory, vertical bi-amping will give better left-right separation.  There are lots of variables, and preference is always subjective, so it's hard to give an explanation why you prefer the horizontal configuration.  Did you try any tube rolling?

@ieales +1 an active crossover plus DSP is the best!

I tried vertical bi-amping once and smashed the valves on the bottom power amp.😂

Spenav No worries and thank you for your input. I will see what I can learn about active xover systems. 

I got you. Take your time. Read up about it. It is actually simpler than it sounds. In your case, you can get good results using a two-way xover and leave the mid and high frequency drivers connected to the passive crossover. Look into Marchant crossover. I have had excellent results with them in the past. Sorry I opened this can of worms 😀. 

Spenav you got that right. Overwhelming the support for active crossover. I may need to find an active crossover guru opening up those speakers is not something I am currently comfortable with. Whew. 

@backdoor 

It seems that the crowd is pushing you towards active electronic crossover 😀. They are right. Look into it, and when ready, give it a try. It’s worth the trouble. It will be an eye opener. 

For me horizontal is the best but in order to realize the full benefits, an active crossover should be use. Vertical was only slightly better than using a single amplifier. Horizontal is a big improvement and you can use a much more powerful amplifier for the bass region. I’ve been multi-amping for over 40 years and would not do it any other way.

Bi-amping with internal XO is a waste of time in either direction.

See Active Vs. Passive Crossovers (sound-au.com)

Digital XO from the source can be stellar if you know what you are doing.

I had an actively  bi amped  setup. It was really quite scary how large the sound stage was etc. The amp.on the bottom can be much bigger than the one running  the mids and tweets 

Somewhere in the back of my brain, I remember reading that some speakers change the crossover frequencies and slopes when you try to bi-amp using the internal crossovers. I’d suggest getting either an active crossover or a DSP and set things the way you want, not the speaker company.

All the best.

Same results here. Vertical = blah, Horizontal = Smile.  

When you are ready to go next level, try an electronic crossover. No rush though since you are happy with the sound as is now. You will thank me later 😀. Your wires are fine. Morrow is a good and proud establishment. Enjoy. You have respectable gears. 

Also my speaker wire and connections are morrow

No I am using the speaker crossovers. 

My experience has been similar to yours. Are you using an active x-over?

Usually all the theory says vertical is best, assuming identical amps.  Few things are changing though:

• Interconnect and speaker cables
• Apparent amp input impedance is cut in half.

Normally with solid state preamps the latter doesn't matter.  Cutting from 25kOhms to 12.5kOhms is usually well above a pre's output impedance, but if the pre is tube or just high output impedance, or the amp is low input impedance it could be enough.