What is overkill for Vandersteens?

Hi all, I've been an occasional lurker for a while and thought I might be able to add to this thread.

My listening room currently is setup with a pair of 3A Sigs driven with a Carver M500t. In previous setups I've used an M1.0t and either 2 or 4 M200t's. The M200t's were either used in tandem in a horizontal bi-amp configuration or in a moment of madness 4 monoblocks driving each input.

To my ears, the best overall sound is the M500t in bi-wire configuration. Two hundred-fifty watts/channel is more than enough in my 20'x15'x7'6" room and results in the best balance and detail.

Hope this helps

I had a pair of 3A signatures that I vertically bi-amped with a pair of Counterpoint SA-220s. The difference vs. one amp was more than just power. Sonically there was a huge improvement in every aspect of the sound.

Try it. You'll love running both.

Hey, why not try passive biampng? You could hook up one amp to power the woofers and the other amp to power the tweeters.The specs on the 3a's say that they drop to 4 ohms and if you bridge the Macs to mono they will see 2 ohms, I'm wondering if the Macs will sound good when faced with a 2 ohm load? You could also biamp using one amp per side and run the woofers on one channel and the tweeters on the other channel of each amp.If your preamp does not have dual outputs you can use a Y connector. Good Luck!!

06-06-09: Tvad
Truth is, at 500wpc, one is plenty...

Anything 500 can do, 1,000 can do better. ;)

The 3as do like power, but Tvad and others are correct. 500 wpc should be more than enough. Try them as monos and then sell one.

I cant think of a reason you would need both, att hat power the only thing 2 will do is help you get over manhood issues you may or may not have lol

Ya, we'll see.

Oh Alright already! I'll try it out. I am taking one at a time in to an electrical engineer friend who is going to bring them up to Mac specs, if they are not already, and give them a good going through. When I get them both back, I promise I will hook them up. I admit, in retrospect, kind of a stupid question, even if I got 5 responses saying they tried it and there was no difference, don't waste my time, sell one......I probably still would end up trying it out.

Thanks for all the replies, I will be back with a report.

sell the extra one. Of course, try them as mono blocks first, but then sell the extra one and buy something else you don't need but want.

That's a very nice match, BTW, the Vandy's and Mac. I buddy sole his B & W's and bought some 5a's that he matched with some 501 Mac's, it's sweet. Overkill since the Vandy's have built in subs, but the sound is sweet.

you already know the single mc2500 is more than capable...however 'anything worth doing is worth over-doing'.

You will get better performance with both. Listen before you sell one of them.

Wendell