Don't bother. Not if sound quality is what you care about. If tech is what you crave, to look cool in the eyes of guys who love gadgets and goo-gaw, then go for it. EQ. The more the better.
If sound quality is your goal however then use whichever amp sounds the best, sell the other, and count your blessings you were smart enough to not get sucked into the vortex that is bi-amping.
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what is the best way to go, vertical or horizontal?
Go vertical, put the amp close to the speaker, use shorter speaker cable. |
What "more" are you looking for?
Bi-Amping can often bring some benefits if you are taxing the amp with bass, but with the subs, I would assume you are not pushing the amp very hard?
It's an old amp, lot has changed. If you feel you must have a new amp, but a better one and sell the Quatre DLH 100 while it has value.
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Thanks for your collective input. Perhaps I am being sucked into the vortex. I have yet to turn it up past half volume, so maybe I am just being a "look at my massive system" guy, though I am literally the only person who ever sees it (the neighbors hear it sometimes). The specs recommend 250 watts and I am pushing them with 100 a side.
I am running a pair of re-built Veritas 2.4s. Would bi-wiring them add an appreciable difference? |
I am sure there will be many different opinions, but unless you have inadequate wire, especially thin gauge, bi-wiring is unlikely to offer much if any improvement.
Ignore the specs for power on the speakers. They tend to be a bit meaningless and depending on how big your room is, 100W in an amplifier with good "reserves", i.e. able to push higher than that for peaks, my be more than sufficient for the volumes you achieve without pushing into clipping.
If you want "loud" then there are speakers for that. If you want "good", then room treatment, perhaps an amp upgrade, etc. etc. are better places to spend your money.
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heaudio123"Ignore the specs for power on the speakers."
That is extremely poor, misinformed, unconsidered advice ignoring power recommendations for speakers is the first step for failing to tune, optimize, and protect you're speaker system. |
There is nothing wrong with having a powerful system as long as you like it. My 2 channel system is 350 watts per side. The speakers are rated at 600 watts so I like power. Volume is not my main concern, quality is. My experience with bi-amping comes from my home theater rig. I used 2 channels of the 11.2 available to bi-amp the front left and right. The set up took the 140 watts per channel to 280 for 2 channels driven and less when all 11 are being used. The B&W 803's sound great. I'm using 2 B&W DB4 subs from the preamp out connectors. Also, I use a Furman Elite 20 pfi power conditioner which has up to 45 amps of peak reserves if needed on a 20 amp circuit. The system sounds as though it is performing effortlessly at all times. My advice is to go for the second amp and bi-amp your speakers. Just be sure that you use the best wire you can buy whether your interconnects or speaker wires are short or long. I've heard the arguments for short speaker wires but I've never had a room or amps where I could do that kind of set up. Happy listening. |
Looked up your system. Long interconnects work best with XLR connections. |
Clearthink, Long on superlatives, and insults, as usual conveying absolutely no information and bringing nothing to the conversation. To the op, you can ignore "posts" like these from people just out to insult others. Speaker "power" specs are near meaningless. The recommended amplification for your speakers is "up to 250W". What does that mean? Not a whole lot. The majority of speaker "events", i.e. smoke, are from under-powered amplifiers drove into serious clipping, usually by someone using them in "party" mode, not actually listening to music, and to most it would be very obvious something is not "okay". In theory you can bottom out a speaker with a high powered amplifier but again, you are going to notice something is not "right". Odds are for that speaker, the woofers are rated somewhere around 250W, the tweeters a whole lot less. No one ever drives, except when testing, 250W continuous into a speaker .... clearthink1,150 posts04-28-2020 10:27am
heaudio123"Ignore the specs for power on the speakers."
That is extremely poor, misinformed, unconsidered advice ignoring power recommendations for speakers is the first step for failing to tune, optimize, and protect you’re speaker system. |
heaudio123"Clearthink, Long on superlatives, and insults, as usual conveying absolutely no information and bringing nothing to the conversation."
Those who lack knowledge, understanding, and plain logic often result to personal attack, insult , and derision in an effort to appear thoughtful, authoritative, and expert so from those type of people I actually accept the "insult" as an actual compliment or praise. Thank you heaudio and best of luck to you in you're journey towards truth! |
I am running a pair of re-built Veritas 2.4s. Would bi-wiring them add an appreciable difference? Seriously? No. Here's why. First of all, in order to benefit from bi-amping you need an active crossover that is at least as good as the passive one in your speakers- or you lose a step right here. The speaker right now is connected directly to the amp. Adding a crossover adds connections. The interconnects you use need to be at least good enough to make up for this, or you lose another step. Also its an active crossover. It needs power. So add in a power cord or two. One for the crossover, one for the amp. You can skip these but then guess what? Lose a step. The other supposed benefit of bi-amping is you can have a quality midrange/treble amp that doesn't need to be as powerful, and it will sound better because of being relieved of having to put out all that powerful low bass. That's the theory anyway. Which falls apart because it conveniently leaves out the fact the money spent on the crap bass amp and crossover and all the rest would have bought you an amp that sounds even better still and without having to buy all the other stuff. What you might want to ask yourself is why if bi-amping is so good nobody actually does it? Why are all the shows chock full of systems that are not bi-amped? Why are hardly any audiophiles systems bi-amped? Why is millercarbons system not bi-amped??! Just look at the stuff that crazy guy does- he would for sure be doing this if it made any sense! https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367
Right. He would. If it made any sense he would totally be all over it.
The specs recommend 250 watts and I am pushing them with 100 a side. A common enough misconception. 250 watts is nothing more than an indication of how much clean power a speaker can take without going up in smoke. It has nothing to do with how much power the speaker "needs". The plain fact of the matter is speakers do not "need" any power at all. It is you who needs power, to get from the speakers the volume you want. The less volume you want, the less power you need. You're not even using the power you have now. The last thing you need is more. Don't feel bad. The industry and even us audiophiles do a terrible job of explaining this stuff. The truth is you are not "pushing 100 watts" now. You may have an amp capable of putting out 100 watts. That's an entirely different thing. In reality, if you were to measure, odds are any given moment any normal volume you're using a handful of watts at most. Now, if you want to do something that definitely will make a big improvement, add two more subs. DBA. Never fails. |
Bi-Amp DOES NOT require an external crossover. There is already a cross-over in your speakers, making it impossible for the amplifier to supply power at any frequencies other than what the speaker can take them at.
In almost all woofer crossover circuits (there are always exceptions but rare), there is a series inductor. Effectively what that does is increase in resistance as the frequency goes up. In series with the tweeter is a capacitor that increases in resistance with a decrease in frequency. Yes there is more complexity to it than that, but that is the basics. What that means is when you bi-amp, the amplifier connected to the woofer, only CAN transmit power and low frequencies. It means the amplifier connected to the tweeter (or tweeter and mid) and only transmit power associated with those frequencies.
In regards to Miller's comment w.r.t. why don't most audiophile bi-amp? For one, most good quality amplifiers have enough capacitance and enough feedback that perturbations in the power supply caused by the bass do not create noticeable pertubations in the the upper frequencies (IM Distortion technically). Many audiophiles like some amps, and don't like others and have no clue what is going on in the circuitry that makes that the case. Most audiophiles I have talked to have never actually even tried to bi-amp.
Me and Miller are in agreement in bass arrays, but I caution against using the term DBA as there are Double Bass Arrays, and what some call Dynamic Bass Arrays (but should just call bass array), and they should not be confused with each other.
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Clearthink, You should probably spend less time on feeble attempts to discredit other posters here, while not offering up any evidence or knowledge to forward an attempt at discrediting, and spend less time on insulting other people here, and spend more time on building your own personal credibility which does not benefit from such personal attacks lacking in substance. At a minimum, I am sure you are aware that visitors can read both our posts. Where yours is nothing but a personal attack lacking substance, my posts are topically relevant and show a substantial understanding of the underlying technology. While other's may disagree with my conclusions, they will at least acknowledge I do understand the topic being discussed on more than a cursory level. What conclusion do you think readers will reach with your posts? Good day. clearthink1,151 posts04-28-2020 1:46pm
heaudio123"Clearthink, Long on superlatives, and insults, as usual conveying absolutely no information and bringing nothing to the conversation."
Those who lack knowledge, understanding, and plain logic often result to personal attack, insult , and derision in an effort to appear thoughtful, authoritative, and expert so from those type of people I actually accept the "insult" as an actual compliment or praise. Thank you heaudio and best of luck to you in you’re journey towards truth! |
Are you two done now or do I have to send you to your rooms? ; )
All insight- even though contradictory at times- is an opportunity to learn, so I thank you all.
I bought the additional amp and will try things out. My thinking is I bi wire each side with a horizontal configuration as the amps are not actually going to be exactly the same even though they are the same model. And here I go into the vortex.
A challenge I see is that the old Citation is set up for two "system" outputs, so one to each amp, but I also need my subs connected. One is a Phase Tech 10, the other an Infinity, both powered.
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With amps that old, careful about channel to channel and amp to amp matching. If you have an AC volt-meter and a test CD, you can measure it fairly accurately, just keep the frequency at 400Hz and lower on your test signal. Run the test CD, and measure the output voltage at the amplifier on all channels. Even with speakers connected, at the amp, the voltage should be really close on all channels. A 12% voltage difference is a 1db volume difference if my math skills have not failed me today.
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So I received my 2nd Quatre DLH 100 and wired it into the system to run the high pass with my other one run out to a subwoofer and then back to the low pass on my Veritas 2.4s. Everything is sounding great and looks good, too. |
