How do I bi-wire and bi-amp?

If you want to bi-amp, you'll need an active cross-over and an additional amp. (stereo or a pair of mono's.) Subaruguru's response was for bi-wiring.

What speakers do you have?

Regards
Jim

Edesilva- I'm not at all familiar with your ML's, but am curious about how you cross over before the signal gets to the amps. If passive, are you able to adjust slope and balance? How do you then run speaker wire separately to the LF and HF drivers? From what you seem to be saying, you somehow do a XO before the amps, then run speaker wires to the ML's XO, which sort of sounds like a hybrid bi-amp/bi-wire arrangement. Perhaps you could describe your set-up? I have a pair of Maggies that I'm looking to experiment with bi-amping and would like to consider all options.

Patrick- One of the other advantages of bi-amping is that you can use amps with less power as both amps work more efficiently within their narrower bandwidth. Typically, the amp for HF is around half of the power of the LF amp as LF's suck alot of power. A 200 watt LF amp with a 100 watt HF amp plus the XO may outperform and play louder than one 300 watt amp.

Regards
Jim

Edesilva- THanks. I'm a little lost, but it's probably because I'm not familiar with the speaker. Sounds like it's a little closer to a bi-wire with with an amp for each wire pair?? I'll find a dealer and take a peek....

Jim

Mike- Thanks, I am now beginning to understand the basics of the ML arrangement and it seems like it might be a good (and less expensive!) alternative to a "true" bi-amp with the advantage of eliminating a separate XO. A couple of questions, though- Do you find that you need the same watts to the LF as the HF in order to balance the volume between HF and LF? If not, how is balance achieved? Assuming that HF and LF amps are identical, do you find a sonic difference and/or volume difference in going this route vs simply finding a similar amp with twice the power and bi-wiring it to the speakers? (In other words, could one accomplish the same thing by bi-wiring an amp of twice the power?)

Thanks
Jim