Miltiple amps for stereo Matrix 801's

No, I'd like to hear what you have to say on this.

Ten or fifteen years ago it was popular to bi-amp large speakers by using a SS amp for the LF and a tube amp for the HF.

In better active designs such as ATC's studio monitors one amp is used for each driver. Meridian also does this.

I'm not suggesting that I will get the same results by bi-amping through a passive x-over, but I do think I will achieve better results than a single amp would give me.

The Y adapters are a great idea. What if I used four Bryston Powerpacs, two 300's for the woofers and two 120's for the heads?

If I mounted these to the back or bottom of each speaker it would keep the cable runs short.

The gain difference of the amps would be my primary concern, how would I figure that out? I guess I could could use four 300's to make things easier, but I don't need that kind of power to the heads.

Or I could do two 7B-SST2's @ 600W per. Would that be better than trying to bi-amp each speaker?

I plan on using the new Wyred4Sound Dac2 with volume control. It uses the newest Dac chips from ESS so I think it's as good as any other high-end Dac.

I thought about a pro amp for the bass, a QSC or MC2. The Powerpac 300 really isn't much power for the woofer, when you consider good powered subs typically have 1K Watt amps.

The 7B-SST2 would be plenty of power @ 600W, maybe I'll do that. Would that be as good as trying to bi-amp them?

@Rhljazz,

Bryston has been around a long time and has a stellar reputation. That's really the only reason.

I've been looking at ICE amps and other class D amps. I just don't trust them. Bryston is a known commodity.

I can ask W4S about this if I decide to go in that direction. Thanks for the help and I have a better idea now of my options.

@ Ngjockey,

Why do B&W and hundreds of other manufacturers provide two sets of binding posts on their products?

Consumer demand, to sell more amplifiers, for bi-wiring?

Ideally, all speakers would either be active or come with an external crossover for use at line level. Westlake Audio and Naim provide external x-overs with their speakers, to name a couple.

In the pro market they use monitor controllers with adjustable x-over points. Most studio monitors are active these days but the bigger stuff typically isn't.

So you don't recommend bi-amping because of gain problems between the two amps and/or because each amp will perform differently based on the passive crossover points?