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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
gs5556
1,212 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.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,142 posts
 
On paper the idea makes alot of sense with the primary benefit coming from the use of an external active crossover network. However, with all things audio related, there is not a single path to better sound reproduction and polyamping has its own set of trade-offs with cost and system complexity being the most obvious.

edle
235 posts
 
There is nothing new under the sun!!!

Polyamping!!! What a fancy name....The person who made-up this name would like other think that he is the one who invent the whole thing.

I'm bi-amping my speakers for the past 7 years....Other already doing it for 20 or may be 30 years or more.....
4yanx OP
1,576 posts
 
Well I made up the label "polyamping" for the purpose of this thread title though, like you say, there is nothing new under the sun so I won't claim it as an original idea. Nor will I claim, or even remotely infer, that I "invented the whole thing". Had I the technical expertise to do so or the stones to claim such, I wouldn't be here asking questions.

Has anyone taken a look at the Orions under the link http:\\www.linkwitzlab.com who would like to comment on whether it seems a reasonable approach?
swampwalker's avatar
swampwalker
5,138 posts
 
To get an idea of the power demands of driving a woofer to realistic levels, get an amp that has power meters. Forgetting whether or not they have a high degree of absolute accuracy, just put on a disc with a well developed bass line and crank it up some. You will see the meters barely move, until the bass line kicks in, then if the meters have a quick rise and decay, you can pretty much track the rythym with the meters, showing 10-100x more power requirement than the highs. I first saw this on a CM Labs 150 wpc amp I owned in the late 70s. Never had another amp w/meters, but it sure taught me the power required for accurate bass.
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