Bi amping

[adventfan]

Does anyone have any thoughts about Bi amping or opinions? I have a audiosource amp100 and a carver hr752 using as a preamp . I'm thinking about buying another amp to try this but would like some thought on this .Thanks

[AndrewT]

Hi,
if your speakers have bi-wireable terminals then you can bi-amplify.
The impedance seen by each amplifier is raised considerably outside the passband of each half of the passive crossover. This eases the stress felt by the amp and it's PSU and often results in a small improvement in performance.

I recommend passive multi-amping. I reckon that the extra money spent on an extra amplifier is far better value than spending the same money on exotic cabling.

[adventfan]

Thank you for your reply .I know that i must use the same amps and also my speakers are biwireable.My question is when i hook them up should i keep them on the stereo mode or put them on the bridge mode which they have? Thanks

[Nelson Pass]

You do not have to have the same amps, but it is helpful if you
can adjust the gain of at least one of the amps.

[benchtester]

I once built a triamp system that worked out very well. I used IC amplifiers, with a separate amp for the tweeter, mid and woofer. I think the biggest benefit is when the crossover is before the amplifier (active) and the output of the amp is directly driving the speaker coil. This isolates the speaker impedance variations from the crossover circuit as well as provides a huge dampening factor. (For commercial two terminal speakers, you would need to bypass the passive crossovers inside the cabinet.)

My amps were as different as the speaker drivers: the tweeter amp was a tiny very fast amp (a signal op amp driving six BUF634 buffers), the mid was fast but with more current and the woofer amp was slow but more current. All the amps are fast enough that any variation the time lag (latency) is not an issue for audio; it's a fraction of a micro-second.

As Nelson says, it's good to be able to adjust the gain. I left the amps at the same gain, but adjusted the gain in the active crossovers. This eliminated the power and voltage range waste in the padding resistors which are in passive crossovers.

[AndrewT]

Active multi-amping is a much more complex project than passive multi-amping.

Forget active (line level crossover before the power amps) until you have more experience.

[Andre Visser]

On a new system I believe one good amplifier will always sound better than two "less good" amplifiers. When you have an amplifier already it is perhaps a more complicated decision.

André

[AndrewT]

Originally posted by Andre Visser
On a new system I believe one good amplifier will always sound better than two "less good" amplifiers. When you have an amplifier already it is perhaps a more complicated decision.

André

and if the existing amplifier is superb in the bass/mid region, then selecting an amplifier that is well suited to the treble driver will give a better result than trying to unsuccessfully find the perfect amplifier.

[Andre Visser]

Originally posted by AndrewT
and if the existing amplifier is superb in the bass/mid region, then selecting an amplifier that is well suited to the treble driver will give a better result than trying to unsuccessfully find the perfect amplifier.

As I've said, then it can get more complicated.

I would still consider using one amplifier for the reason that all amplifiers sound different, some have phase differences etc, what will happen at crossover.

[Nordic]

Does it require new crossovers?

I sure have enough amps by now to try it out...