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Are you kidding? How many watts do you need? !! I'm not sure I see how or why two would be advantageous over one. Then again, I might be ignorant of some advantage I don't know. I have one original sunfire amp, and I can't imagine ever even using its full output. |
I have found this review which is so very exuberant, that i thought i might find someone here who has done the same thing with these amps. as to see if you had a simular experance or not.
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I have owned a single Sunfire stereo signature amp for a few months and had read on the Sunfire website that for a real treat, use TWO of these amps in a BI-WIRE, MONO-BLOCK MODE. Essentially you are using them as mono-blocks, each amp now putting 1200 WATTS INTO 8 OHMS AND 2400 INTO 4 OHMS!!!!!
OH MY G*D!!! WHAT AN AMAZING SOUND!!! TRULY AN AMAZING EXPERIENCE!!
In this configuration, I used them to drive my B&W 802's using a Sunfire Tube preamp and an ARCAM Alpha 9 CD player with Analysis Plus Silver Oval speaker cable.
The sound is remarkable. The music now fills the room with such presence and dynamics that it is like nothing I have ever experienced. It is as if you went from watching a live program on television to being suddenly put in the show, live. The sound is fast, clean, tight and has amazing imaging with each instrument occupying a solid area in the ENORMOUS soundfield. I'm not saying it's like being at a live performance, it just creates such a dynamic and detailed soundstage that the music comes alive in a way that has to be experienced to be believed!
I was so amazed with their performance in this set-up that I had a friend of mine who is a published musician/composer (RICHARD SOUTHER), come over and listen to some of his CD's. He was even more blown away than I was, due to the fact that he has spent hundreds of hours in recording studios, and had heard his music on high end mastering systems, yet he said he had NEVER heard his music sound as amazing as with this set up.
He had heard the same system with just the one Sunfire Signature in regular stereo mode, and had enjoyed it, but he could not believe the difference it made adding the second. We sat and listened with our mouths agape for almost two hours. Afterwards he said the experience inspired him to go back and make more music just to hear it on my gear!!
When you compare the price of two of these amps to just one Krell or other high end/high wattage amp...you can't touch them.
I urge any prospective buyers and all current owners of these amps to try this configuration if you can. YOU WILL BE BLOWN AWAY!!!! I GUARANTEE IT!!!
Just remember to follow the instructions given in the Sunfire manual closely and to keep the volume/gain way down when you start!
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I would like more reviews but can't find any, except one other that i posted on the thread titled (Has anybody done this?) |
Line - you are a determined man on this one! Do you have two Sunfire Sigs? |
Arthursmuck...I have one, two ch. Signiture; but i will saw this...i went from 200 watts per. ch., to 600 watts per. ch. and the difference in sound is obvious at all volume levels, but it could be the design difference of the two amps. and not the added power or both.
Here is the other review i found>
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Randy Bingham at Sunfire urged me to try a second Sunfire Signature Amp in a vertical bi-wire configuration. This means you use two Sunfire Signature Amps. Each is fed an unbalanced signal to the normal input then the lab input for left and right are bridged with a single (mono) interconnect. If you bi-wire or tri-wire your speakers as in the case of my reference Cello Stradivari Legends, you should connect the high/mid leads to the current output while using the voltage output for the bass leads. Got it? Good. Don't worry it took me a minute to figure out too.
The best way I can describe the change in sound is to make a car analogy. I drive a six-cylinder VW GTI. It meets my budget and my need for speed which is a nice tradeoff. The difference a second Sunfire Signature Amp made is like trading in your GTI in on a Porsche 911. The extra power elevates the music to a whole other emotional level. Yes, I know there is an extra $3000 plus an interconnect included in the price of this upgrade, however it is worth it. And who said you ever had to buy it all at once?
The sound of the vertical bi-wired Sunfire Signature Amps multiplied everything good about the sound of the amps. The best test for the effect of the second amp was using the new MCA remasters of Jimi Hendrix's Axis Bold as Love. On "Little Wing," Jimi's guitar floated in space, something I have heard in few systems. The power of these amps was frightening. I don't believe in inefficient loudspeakers. I like my Cello's, WATT's and Puppies and even slightly less efficient transducers like THIELs and Martin Logans, yet these Sunfire Signature Amps feel like they can drive any difficult load from Apogee Grands to a Lincoln Town Car.
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O.K., I'll believe you, even though it makes little empirical sense to me. I've been around enough audio circles to believe many of the experiences of good listeners over what seems it should make sense. Any ideas about mixing/matching one Sunfire amp w. another amp of a different manuafacturer in a horizontal biamp configuration? |
I have two bridged Sunfire Amps which I used to drive the the four 12" woofers in the bass towers for my old Infinity Betas (circa 80s). I used Counterpoint Natural Progrssion Mono Blocks to drive the remaining drivers in the HF/mid panels--all EMIT ribbons including the most awesome midbass ribon panels. The bass was crossed over at 80 hz 18 db per octive.
Even though the Counterpoints only put out 150 watts per, they were far and away the highest current amps on the market and they literally made all the ribbons including the dificult midbass ribbons sing. Pure magic. The combination was absolutely the best sound I'd ever heard from a stereo system.. A doctor friend of mine who owned the Infinity IRS $175,000 reference system which was driven by a Jadis Defy 7 on top and the 1000 watts per mono amps built in Infinity amps for thre 6 12" woofers in each bass tower came over to compare sounds based on memory. Less than an hour into the listening session he literally started to cry. His girlfriend asked him what was wrong and hew said he'd wasted all that money and the Betas driven by that combination (and an Audio Research LS-2a mark II preamp) literally blew his $200,000+ investment away.
Alas, my then wife (now ex) sold the Betas out from under me after conning me into joining her brother on the links for a liesurely round of golf one saturday and the dream was shattered.
Ironically, I now own Carver ALS speakers with two 32" verticcal ribbons each reaching way down into the 100s hertz-wize and 4 12" woofers complementing the ribbons on both speakers. I'm going to have to reconfigure the speakers for bi-amping. The Counterpoints sound very good driving them full range, but they really can't handle all the power guzzling and wildly unstable loads if you want to play transients at sound levels that I'm used to but my new wife complains about. I can't use the bridged Sunfires or I'll undoubtedly blow them trying to drive a load which is supposedly 3.75 ohms (but probably closer to 3 ohms realistically);
Now I'll have to unbridge them and biamp vertically. *@*
It'll be awesome! |
Lawdog, Let us know how it turns out. |
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Well I'm half way there! I got the two Sunfires back from Randy at Sunfire whjich turns out to be less than 10 miles from my home. They are restored to original factory specs and updated. I now must biamp the Carver Amazing Loudspeakers, original edition. I thought the cheapest way to do so would be to connect the ribbons through the passive crossover within through the existng speaker binding posts and add a second set by soldering a piece of good bass speaker cable like the old Tara Labs Temporal Continuum (which should make the bass drivers much stiffer and produce tightly controlled bass) directly to the woofers bypassing the crossover altogether. .
But it must connect to an electronic crossover between the preamps second outputs and the amplifier driving the bass signal. I've many hours trying to check out which would work the best by jumping around on the internet but the best ones are apparantly no longer made.
Which crossover works best with ribbons that are crossed over at a point around 160 and the woofers nearer 200 so that the 4 12" woofers will "augment" the ribbons below 100? That requires some pretty complex equalization of the bass frequencies. I don't think the standard Rane or Ashley is going to make the nut.
Any helpful suggestions or ideas will be gratefully appreciated!
In the meantime I have the two Sunfires smokin' with one channel of each driving each the two speakers--which ain't bi-ampin' but it's already blown me away. Never heard anything even close to this good. After about 24 hours playtime they suddenly broke in with an almost audible pop--and it hit a new dimension altogether. Out of this world! |
Lawdog, I don't understand how you have those two Sunfires wired up. I would appreciate if you could go into detail. If I get a second Sunfire, I will not be biamped. Thanks in advance.
Can you discribe the difference you hear going from one Sunfire to two? Is there any difference at moderate listening levels? |
I've used two Sunfire Signatures bi-amped with two different sets of speakers and the results were very different for each set of speakers.
I first used a pair of Sunfire Signatures to bi-amp a pair of Infinity Kappa 9....very inefficient notorious hard-to-drive power hogs. Bi-amping the Kappa 9 were a world apart from using a single Sunfire Signature amp. The improvements were dramatic.
I then bi-amped a pair of Infinity Rennaisance 90 speakers.
It was a complete waste of an extra amp. Bi-amping was indistiguishable from using a single amp with these speakers. They are much more efficient than the Kappa 9. |
Regarding my post above:
I used a vertical bi-amp configuration in my setup. One amp per speaker. |
At present I am just using one channel of each Sunfire to drive each speaker. It's not bi-amping, but each speaker is receiving the full 300 watts with the power supply which normally drives two channels driving just the one whcih gives it a bit more headroom than if I used just one amp for both channels.
What I will do once I rewire the speakers will be to use one amp vertically for each channel. Basically, I will connect the preamp to each signfire unbalanced with the highs (ribbons) receiving the Current outputs of the left channel and the woofers (through the active crossover) receiving the voltage outputs of the right channel. I then will do the same for the right channel with the other Sunfire.
Traditional biamping would have one unit drive the highs and the other the low signals. By having each amp drive both the high and low signal of one channel you get the same benefits of traditional biamping, but the amp sees both sets of drivers and therefore is more stable. The ribbons get the high current and the woofs get the high voltage. Perfect!
I have an old Audio Control x-over that I'll try unbalanced vertically and a Rane AC23B balanced x-over that I'll try using the Sunfires in a traditional bi-amp configuration and see which is best. I also will try my Ciounterpoint Natural Progression mono blocks on the ribbons and a trusty Sony TA N80ES on the botytom and see if that works better than the dual Sunfires. I also might try the Counterpoints with pone of the Sunfires on the bottom tocover all the bases. Then I'll sell the gear that doesn't make the cut. |
I currently have two Signature 600s in my system, which has balanced interconnects. I simply run one channel through each amp, without bi-wiring or bi-amping as described in the Sunfire manual. The speakers have only one set of binding posts. (I have separate subwoofers powered by their own amps.) My understanding is that this method uses all of the power of each amp for each channel, so I am wondering what additional benefit there would be to the wiring methods described in the Sunfire manual.
Has anyone compared the simple double-amp method described above to the specific monoblock instructions in the Sunfire manual? What were your results?
btw: As noted in another thread, using two 600s is far superior to two 300s. |
Yes! Two Sig 600's, (mono bi-wire) Classic tube pre, Martin Logan requests. DYNAMICS redefined! I added two vintage Magnepan MG 1b's to the remaining current outputs for kicks. Holy crap. Then added a vintage dbx 3bx ds, with all power connections to Tice Power Block/Titan units. This audio gig is a blast. |
I have two sig 2s 600 vertically biwired to my legacy focus 20/20s along with a legacy Goliath subwoofer with a built in 2000 watt amp my preamp is a paradigm p3. The sub is ran thru a xillica active crossover that came with the sub and I gotta say it’s just musical bliss at my house. I wanna talk about it all day. I streamed a Black Sabbath concert live at radio city music hall and it was like sitting in the crowd the snare drum was just giant and bass guitar would tickle my chest and constant goose bumps all over my body awesome to say the least if you can have the means to get two of them do it. Because that will be the best money you ever spent. |
