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!
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!