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"Polyamping" A Look to the Future or Fancy Fad?

In a recent quest for information regarding DIY speaker designs, I was referred to the Linkwitz Orion Project. These speakers employ active crossovers and it is suggested to give each driver its own, separate amplification (actually one for each woofer and one for the tweet/mid - three per speaker). Linkwitz recommends the ATI AT6012, a twelve channel, six zone amp (60W/ch). I am not sure about the merits of the ATI amp but, regardless of amp, does anyone think this will be a "growing" design. I mean I have heard the benefits of biamping and have heard tell of triamping but, in this case, "sextamping"? Octamping would seem to be next. All accounts say that the Orions sound fabulous. Perhaps I am just behind the curve. What so you learned folks think of this direction in audio?
4yanx

Showing 1 response by gs5556

gs5556
1,218 posts
 
If you mean by "a look into the future" that amps will be manufactured in mult-two-channel construction, then I would disagree with it being a trend - too expensive for mass consumption. One if the caveats of mult-amping is that all amps have the identical gain (or withing 0.5%), which basically means using identical amps. If the price of two-chanel or mono amps goes up exponentionally with sound quality, then the prices will climb (linearly??) for each set of channels.

In this regard, I agree with it being one of diminishing returns, and with the price of top notch amplification up in the stratosphere, the question is: when does, for example, multiple Brand X mono pairs equal the performance of a one pair Brand Y. An interesting calculus problem.
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