Should i biamp

After all, two watt amplifiers powering a speaker should make it sound twice as loud, right? Many speakers and receivers have the built-in ability to be bi-amped. To determine if your speakers have this capability, simply look at the back of the speakers. To see if your receiver can be configured to bi-amp, simply check the owners manual.

If everything checks out, follow this step-by-step process to bi-amp your speakers. Remove the jumper cables or bridging bars from the rear of the speakers. This disconnects the high and low frequency portions of the crossover network. Through its internal menu system, configure your receiver to its bi-amp setting. Locate the terminals on the back of the receiver intended for bi-amping:.

Bi-Amping further isolates the different frequency signals by giving the high frequency and the low frequency speakers their own amplification channel. Some multi-channel receivers allow you to use four of the available amplification channels to independently power the upper and lower sets of binding posts.

Some audio enthusiasts feel that bi-amping improves the sound during more demanding moments of music or movies. Essentially it is like having four-wheel-drive when going off road; on rough, rocky terrain it is often better to send power directly to each of the wheels. In your sound system, when the sound is more demanding, sending power to each specific speaker can produce sound that feels less constrained.

Another benefit to this setup is that it gives you the option of buying multiple amplifiers to power your speakers. That way you could look for amplifiers based on sound quality, without having to worry so much about the amount of power the amplifier can produce.

The process of bi-amplifying your speaker setup is almost identical to that of bi-wiring. The only difference is that after you have two sets of cable coming from each speaker, you attach each of these sets of cable to its own set of binding post on the amplifier or to different amplifiers if you want.

The differences offered by these solutions may seem minimal to many listeners, but true audio enthusiasts could find one of these techniques well worth the extra effort.

However, whether you decide to bi-amplify, bi-wire, or keep your speakers the way they are it is important to find the right speaker cable for your speaker setup. We seem to be going off the mark slightly. I will give some specifics that maybe similar to the original question. What I have found is specifically this. The bass is more fast e. The treble and midrange extends more into the room so you get that feeling that the sounds are more near you in the room even had the wife and kids say things like is that rain outside err no it's from the DVD , who just range the bell errm no it's the DVD , Or from music you hear the breathing of note which adds more passion especially to some like Anita Baker singing, etc.

With single wire it's not as obvious as this. DOn't get me wrong it was good but not as good as bi-amp. I can definately hear the Bi-amp difference. Now I know it's not the Yam or the Monitor Audio but I find that in hifi mags Kefs and Monitor for the same price bracket have similar capabilities and the same with Pioneer, Denon and Yamaha. Hope this helps. All the best. Happy New Year to all. They also set the crossovers before the amp stage so it is true bi-amping.

I'm keen to know if anyone has tried this with the new Yam amps before making my decision! Cheers all. You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads A. Replies 15 Views Sep 8, gibbsy. Need help choosing an amp! Replies 29 Views 2K. Aug 7, Baron Mole. I also tried a single amp powering both speakers so each speaker was seeing w x 1. Or is is there something about letting one amp not work as hard due to only running high frequencies while the other amp gets to just work on the low end.

Edit Delete. A number of people, including Richard Vandersteen, think most maybe all? Depending which directions the channels are sent cancelling out more crosstalk between a pair of channels. Variable gains are helpful here, thats one thing I will consider if seeking a second amp.

Its much better to use one better amp than 2 with inferior performance. I think current bi-amp configuration leans more toward horizontal than vertical. That is using one amp per channel monoblocks , instead of splitting the upper and lower frequencies. As randy said, it allows an amp to drive less of a load-which would be very advantageous when connected to inefficient speakers.

Using two monoblocks also let you place the amps close to the speakers, so you don't need long runs. Dual amping also gives the option of running an amp that fairs better with bass on the lower posts. My bryston 3B put a death grip on bass while it wasnt that nice on highs.

Running tubes or class A SS on the high frequencies and something more efficient like a class D on bass can make sense too. If bi-amping is excellent then active speakers are the next and fantastic logical step - get rid of those lossy crossovers altogether and totally eliminate intermodulation distortion by asking the amp to only amplify what the driver is required to output!!!!! I see a KEF in your future The very best design would be to put a DAC in the speaker with the amp, and just send control signals to it.

Agree that active loudspeaker is the next logical step. So an watt amplifier would presumably be overkill, as would two watt amplifier channels per speaker. Given that, as well as the 6 ohm nominal impedance of the speaker, it seems to me that the best and most cost effective approach in this particular case is likely to be a single stereo amplifier having an 8 ohm power rating in the area of to watts, and a 4 ohm power rating of double those numbers or close to it.

Keep in mind that part of your amplification dollars goes toward watts, and part goes toward sound quality. But to answer your more general question: In the case of passive biamping i. Which eases the burden on the amp, and can potentially improve its sonics. Also, in the case of vertical biamping i. In the case of active biamping with an electronic crossover "ahead" of the power amps each amp channel will only have to supply current, power, and voltage in part of the frequency range.

Biamping is a more complex undertaking than a lot of people realize, however, and can in many circumstances do more sonic harm than good. Especially if non-identical amplifiers are used. Good luck. Regards, -- Al. I've not found that biamping works all that well but there are a ton of variables. Two of them are amplifier quality and speaker quality. A third is the quality of the crossover- which is certainly one of the more important variables!

Now the amps I play at home can go to 2Hz with full power, and yet do mids and highs quite well they are tube amps after all. My speakers go to 20Hz so I run the amps full range. I find that quite often a poor electronic crossover means that you can't get the speakers to blend and often you loose detail since the crossover is an additional block between the source and amplifiers.

I've experienced this a number of times and used some pretty high end crossovers. So- success is based on extreme care! If the crossover is designed for the specific speaker used I think you will have greater success.

Perhaps monoblocks would be a better option than bi-amping? Two matching amps, driving each speaker has major improvements over a single stereo amp. Due to each having its own power supply, greater separation, and generally they are the better amps a company makes.

When bi-amping, you've got to be careful with amp matching. If you run two amps of the same size, the bass could seem weak. If you run a larger amp on the bottom, the bass could be too strong. So, careful matching is required to be sure each half of your speaker is running at the same SPL.

When you drive a speaker with one amp, the amp sees the speaker as one load, the designers have designed the crossover to level them out, to keep top and bottom at the same level. But if each amp is seeing a different load, they can react differently, causing your sound to be too much bass, or too much treble. There are speakers built for bi and tri amping, with a crossover that comes before the amps, or active crossover. So each amp only has to work with the frequencies of the speaker it is driving.

And can give fantastic performance, but amp selection is highly critical. And the active crossovers usually have a volume control to help with balancing. Bi-amping can give amazing results!