The Difference Between Bi-amping and Bi-wiring

[Trebdp83]

Personally, I like f#%kin' myself. I'm never disappointed.

 

[Ronald8]

Hey moderator, boot my butt off here. People here take audio too seriously. If these folks only had the same passion for their jobs and health our world would be so much better.

 

[lovinthehd]

Hey moderator, boot my butt off here. People here take audio too seriously. If these folks only had the same passion for their jobs and health our world would be so much better.

Seems you just take yourself too seriously. You can't find the door on your own?

 

[TLS Guy]

I guessed everyone missed these two phrases: With a grain of salt. Or I could be full of it. No one here has a sense of humor. Well eat it. I quit.

"Why in the name of of a policeman" do you think I gave you a humorous reply? Now you go off in a huff. Mind you, we have enough persons of the Audiophool variety wander in here, who are joke before you start! So its hard to tell the difference.

 

[haraldo]

Then your answer if you insist on class A is a Quad current dumping amp. That is Peter Walkers brilliant invention.

The concept, is a class A/B amp, that actually does not have to be outstanding. This is the dumper. Then there is a very good class A amp that feeds a feed forward error correction. This gives pure class A performance. It can be shown mathematically and in practice that the performance is entirely the spec. of the class A amp.

These amps run very cool.

3 KW of class A audio power that powers my studio/AV room. That is a bank of seven Quad 909 power amps.

Your setup is something else
Is there any significant changes since you did that photo album
(of course...... lots of Norwegian Excel drivers there )

I can see that Seas is now bringing to market new versions of many of the drivers with upgraded motor systems, some of these drivers have wow low distortion figures.... but wow expensive too

 

[haraldo]

Hey moderator, boot my butt off here. People here take audio too seriously. If these folks only had the same passion for their jobs and health our world would be so much better.

What could be more serious than audio and really good music?
How do you believe these people take their jobs less seriously?

 

[TLS Guy]

Your setup is something else
Is there any significant changes since you did that photo album
(of course...... lots of Norwegian Excel drivers there )

I can see that Seas is now bringing to market new versions of many of the drivers with upgraded motor systems, some of these drivers have wow low distortion figures.... but wow expensive too

Yes, we moved and now it is bigger and better. I will PM you.

 

[haraldo]

Yes, we moved and now it is bigger and better. I will PM you.

nice

 

[jasenj1]

I know this is an ancient thread, and I didn't go through the whole thing looking for an answer to my question.

Is there a hybrid bi-amping where you use both frequency management in a receiver (active crossover) and keep the passive crossover network in the speakers?

To my brain, this is what is done with LFE management - you set your speakers for small and have certain frequencies sent to the subwoofer. The higher frequencies are sent to the speakers. Why can there not be similar frequency management for treble & mid-bass? Set a crossover frequency in the receiver and it will send the appropriate signals to the tweeters & woofers, and the in-speaker crossovers will work to filter out the unwanted frequencies, but they won't be there.

One difficulty here would be setting the frequency management appropriately in the receiver, but higher-end speakers tell you what their crossover is, so you should be able to dial that in. And if you're bothering at this level, you should be able to use a meter to ensure the response is flat.

So the question really is: Is there a benefit to NOT sending the "wrong" signals to the high & low crossovers? Or do they handle the filtering well enough that there's no point filtering on the speaker wire?

 

[TLS Guy]

I know this is an ancient thread, and I didn't go through the whole thing looking for an answer to my question.

Is there a hybrid bi-amping where you use both frequency management in a receiver (active crossover) and keep the passive crossover network in the speakers?

To my brain, this is what is done with LFE management - you set your speakers for small and have certain frequencies sent to the subwoofer. The higher frequencies are sent to the speakers. Why can there not be similar frequency management for treble & mid-bass? Set a crossover frequency in the receiver and it will send the appropriate signals to the tweeters & woofers, and the in-speaker crossovers will work to filter out the unwanted frequencies, but they won't be there.

One difficulty here would be setting the frequency management appropriately in the receiver, but higher-end speakers tell you what their crossover is, so you should be able to dial that in. And if you're bothering at this level, you should be able to use a meter to ensure the response is flat.

So the question really is: Is there a benefit to NOT sending the "wrong" signals to the high & low crossovers? Or do they handle the filtering well enough that there's no point filtering on the speaker wire?

The sub crossover is a generic crossover, and you only get away with it, as it so low in frequency. It is a way less than ideal system.

Above 100 Hz or so, getting the crossover correct is crucial, and is in fact the heart of the speaker. An active crossover has to be designed with as much care as a passive one. The active crossover would not be in any way the equivalent of the passive one, as in an active speaker the drivers are directly connected to the amps, so there is no interaction between the inductive voice coil of the speaker and the conductive and reactive elements of a passive crossover. In the sub crossover situation the cross should be well below the crossover point to the mid or tweeter. Some speakers do have passive crossovers between 100 and 200 Hz, and these speakers to not work well with the receiver sub crossover arrangement.

 

[jasenj1]

The sub crossover is a generic crossover, and you only get away with it, as it so low in frequency. It is a way less than ideal system.

Above 100 Hz or so, getting the crossover correct is crucial, and is in fact the heart of the speaker. An active crossover has to be designed with as much care as a passive one. The active crossover would not be in any way the equivalent of the passive one, as in an active speaker the drivers are directly connected to the amps, so there is no interaction between the inductive voice coil of the speaker and the conductive and reactive elements of a passive crossover. In the sub crossover situation the cross should be well below the crossover point to the mid or tweeter. Some speakers do have passive crossovers between 100 and 200 Hz, and these speakers to not work well with the receiver sub crossover arrangement.

We have three things going on:
1. The signal going to the speaker's terminals
2. What the speaker's crossover does with that signal
3. The signal that ultimately reaches the driver components

We know that in a standard, single amp configuration a full range signal is sent to the speaker, the internal crossover filters the signal appropriately for the different drivers, and that filtered signal moves the drivers.

In a passive bi-amp configuration, a full range signal goes to both the high & low terminals, the corresponding crossover does its filtering job and the filtered signal goes to the driver.

Using the Paradigm Persona 5F as an example, the manufacturer nicely tells us some crossover information.

3rd order electro-acoustic at 2.4 kHz (tweeter/mid), 3rd order @ 450 Hz

Would there be any advantage to putting pre-amp filters on the signals going to the high & low sides - as long as they were in the ballpark? e.g. Just as bass management is used to filter out signals below 100Hz, have another filter that cuts out everything below 1000Hz for the tweeter side, and everything above 1000Hz for the woofer side? Those numbers don't need to be exact because the speaker's internal crossovers will still do their job, you just need to make sure there is enough signal that you don't cause a dip.

In theory, you would be making each crossover work less. Does it help if the tweeter crossover is not having to deal with 100Hz signal and only has to deal with 1000Hz & above signal?

 

[Swerd]

Would there be any advantage to putting pre-amp filters on the signals going to the high & low sides - as long as they were in the ballpark? e.g. Just as bass management is used to filter out signals below 100Hz, have another filter that cuts out everything below 1000Hz for the tweeter side, and everything above 1000Hz for the woofer side? Those numbers don't need to be exact because the speaker's internal crossovers will still do their job, you just need to make sure there is enough signal that you don't cause a dip.

In theory, you would be making each crossover work less. Does it help if the tweeter crossover is not having to deal with 100Hz signal and only has to deal with 1000Hz & above signal?

I see no advantage to using such hybrid filters as you describe.

No, it will not help analog crossover networks by previously digitally filtering out lower or higher frequencies. To my understanding, crossover components don't survive longer because they "work less" as you suggested.

Analog crossover components can fail if they are exposed to higher voltages than they were meant to handle. But components capable of handling higher voltages are still cheap. Drivers can also fail, but making them more rugged makes them much more expensive. Tweeters (for example) are well known to fail from higher voltages as well as from exposure to lower frequencies.

AV receivers or pre-amps already have the ability to divert bass frequencies to a sub woofer. To achieve what you describe, they must also have the extra digital circuits to do the same for all drivers. There may be a small demand for that, but you would have to convince the receiver and pre-amp makers to do it.

Several speaker makers do build speakers with built-in digital crossovers as well as separate amps for each driver. These crossovers have two separate networks. One is programmed to do all the real crossover work. It is locked, blocking user access. The other network does allow the user to fine tune each driver, but not change the major features of the crossover. If users could change those major features, it be too tempting for tweakers to destroy drivers, and void their warranties. No speaker maker wants to deal with that.

 

[TLS Guy]

I know this is an ancient thread, and I didn't go through the whole thing looking for an answer to my question.

Is there a hybrid bi-amping where you use both frequency management in a receiver (active crossover) and keep the passive crossover network in the speakers?

To my brain, this is what is done with LFE management - you set your speakers for small and have certain frequencies sent to the subwoofer. The higher frequencies are sent to the speakers. Why can there not be similar frequency management for treble & mid-bass? Set a crossover frequency in the receiver and it will send the appropriate signals to the tweeters & woofers, and the in-speaker crossovers will work to filter out the unwanted frequencies, but they won't be there.

One difficulty here would be setting the frequency management appropriately in the receiver, but higher-end speakers tell you what their crossover is, so you should be able to dial that in. And if you're bothering at this level, you should be able to use a meter to ensure the response is flat.

So the question really is: Is there a benefit to NOT sending the "wrong" signals to the high & low crossovers? Or do they handle the filtering well enough that there's no point filtering on the speaker wire?

Unfortunately you do not know enough about speaker design to realize your plan would be a total mess and not work. Just for one issue alone there is no such thing as standard order filters to a speaker. The order of the crossover is composite. All drivers have a roll off, and the crossover electrically has to take account of that.

So if a speaker has a roll off first order for instance, then to get a third order crossover the electrical crossover has to be second order, and one plus two makes three. So what I am telling you is that the speaker spec. gives you no clue as to what the electrical crossover needs to be. So you need to fill that brain of yours with mountains of knowledge before you advance schemes like yours. Your plan is way worse than useless.

 

[jasenj1]

I see no advantage to using such hybrid filters as you describe.

No, it will not help analog crossover networks by previously digitally filtering out lower or higher frequencies. To my understanding, crossover components don't survive longer because they "work less" as you suggested.

I wasn't thinking about longevity, but signal "purity" or accuracy at the driver. If one of the reasons for bi-amping is to keep the high & low frequency signals separate, see this blog from Yamaha:

The problem is this: If that thud of a bass drum and the ting of a triangle are sent down the same wire at the same time, there is potential for audio degradation of the sound of the triangle. That’s because high frequency signals (with their relatively low currents of electricity) are susceptible to being unduly influenced by the higher-current low frequency signals (and their associated magnetic fields) simultaneously being sent through the same wire.

The solution is to separate the two signals via bi-amping — something that greatly reduces interactions between the two signals.

Then why not avoid sending both the "thud" and "ting" down the same speaker wire?

Anyway, sounds like I'm way off track. Thanks for indulging me.

 

[TLS Guy]

I wasn't thinking about longevity, but signal "purity" or accuracy at the driver. If one of the reasons for bi-amping is to keep the high & low frequency signals separate, see this blog from Yamaha:

Then why not avoid sending both the "thud" and "ting" down the same speaker wire?

Anyway, sounds like I'm way off track. Thanks for indulging me.

You don't know how far off track you are. This is what happens when physics is not part of the school curriculum.

The bass drum and the "thud and the ting" do not go separately down the same wire. There is always only one wave. You need to understand Fourier analysis.

The image below shows how three sine waves of different frequency sum to make one more complex wave. There is no limit to the sign waves that add together to make a single wave.