alrighty, here's a question for you all...

[ratso]

so lets say you have speakers that can be bi-amped (i do). i would like to eventually get some pretty good power to drive these, around 500W per channel would be nice. when i start to look around the amps i would like to buy that can push that kind of power are few and expensive (i'm not looking for specific amp recommendations here BTW). but, there are a lot more (and cheaper) options down around the 200WPC range. so could i buy, say, 2 matching stereo amps around 200WPC and use one to power my tweeters and one to power my woofers and double the power? would the crossover allow full power to the top and bottom half of the speakers? or alternatively, use one amp to power one speaker and one to power the other? how would this work for stereo separation? if this would work it would give the added benefit of just buying one amp for now and using it until i could afford the matching amp later.

 

[fuzz092888]

The tweeters/midrand/woofers don't require all the same amounts of power at a given time. Woofers general eat up the most power in a speaker.

Bi-amping is only of any use if you are actively bi-amping, which means using an external crossover. If you're talking about using the passive built in crossover than bi-amping is of dubious benefit (to my ears none zero zip).

You would never want 200 watts going to your tweeter and 200 watts going to the woofer. If you didn't blow the tweeter it would be much louder and everything would sound out of whack.

 

[ratso]

thanx, yes i realize that you don't get the 200W to the tweeter in the above scenario, that more power would go to the woofers. the reason why i brought up crossovers at all is i raised this question a long time ago and someone answered that the crossover would limit the amps output in the above scenario, which i did not understand. i have a feeling he didn't understand the question i was posing (it is a bizarre question i realize). and the issue here is not bi-amping or psuedo-biamping, it is about getting more power cheaper than going big bux monoblocks. i am not doing this for any audible benefits from bi-amping, just to get more headroom. the question simply is: would using 2 matching stereo amps double the power you get? and if so, then why would you want/need monoblocks, assuming you have two binding posts per speaker?

**edit: hmm. i have been flexing my 3 brain cells on this, and i think i know the answer. someone tell me if i'm right. the scenario would NOT work. if you had 2 stereo amps running 200W a channel and had one power the woofers of the two speakers, that would work fine - you would get 200W per channel for both speakers. but putting a 200W stereo amp on the tweeters would be too much for them, and they would only draw a small fraction of the 200W (lets say 25W a side). so instead of a hoped for 800W (200W x4) you would only get (200W x2 + 25W x2) 450W. now you could solve this by putting one amp on one speaker, and the other amp on the other speaker which would get you the full 800W, but unless the amps have a way to run in mono, than you would be running a full stereo signal into only one speaker which i would guess would kill your stereo imaging? anybody? yea or nay?

 

[KEW]

Bi-amping is only of any use if you are actively bi-amping, which means using an external crossover.

I just wanted to make sure it is understood that you mean the amplification is downstream of the crossovers. So the crossover is working with a line-level signal before reaching the amps.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Passive Bi-amping helps theoretically from an engineering point of view, but does not help much in reality. It would really be a waste of money. Don't do it. Save your money.

 

[KEW]

so lets say you have speakers that can be bi-amped (i do). i would like to eventually get some pretty good power to drive these, around 500W per channel would be nice. when i start to look around the amps i would like to buy that can push that kind of power are few and expensive (i'm not looking for specific amp recommendations here BTW). but, there are a lot more (and cheaper) options down around the 200WPC range. so could i buy, say, 2 matching stereo amps around 200WPC and use one to power my tweeters and one to power my woofers and double the power? would the crossover allow full power to the top and bottom half of the speakers? or alternatively, use one amp to power one speaker and one to power the other? how would this work for stereo separation? if this would work it would give the added benefit of just buying one amp for now and using it until i could afford the matching amp later.

Can you be specific about your amp choice and speakers?

If your amp can be bridged without conflicting with the impedance rating of your speakers, your plan to buy one now then a second later is a good one.

The fault in your proposition is you are looking at two 200W amp modules (in a two channel amp) feeding a speaker instead of a single 400W amp feeding the speaker. Let's say some loud and deep bass requires 350 watts to deliver the SPL without clipping. In your bi-amped scenario the max power to the woofer is 200W, so you come up short!
I'm sure the reality is much more complicated than this, but you get the point.

Edit: I'm sorry, I posted before fully reading your last post. I basically am agreeing with what you said.

 

[ratso]

i do get the point. i was kinda looking at this wrong i guess. i was thinking more along the lines of a 200W stereo amp puts out 400W total. but you are right, a 200W stereo amp is really just 2 monoblocks in one box, 200W + 200W. so the woofers couldn't have 400W to draw, only 200W max. that makes sense, thanx.

 

[ratso]

ah the hell with it anyways. im just gonna get a 1000W ice powered amp and then i don't need to worry about it

 

[frostbyte]

I'm not entirely sure why home set ups that bi and tri amplify one set of full range speakers use the same amp for all speakers, but it seems they do. They put the same amp on the tweets as they do the mids even though you don't need that much power. What I think happens is that if you only put a 50 watt amp on the tweet and a 200 watt on the mid and a 400 on the sub, since home audio doesn't have a line drive option, you end up with way too much power being delivered to the low end and you can barely hear the tweets. So unless you can adjust the line drive like a car stereo, you just go with equal amps. If one is specifically for a sub and the other is for both the mid and tweet, it won't matter as much.

I think what you were wanting to do was double down on the power of one channel to get it to 4 ohms output . You could potentially do this if the impedence of the speakers works that way and you have 2 matching stereo amps. I wouldn't personally like mixing a tweet and mid on the same channel though hoping to get the double down for power.

It gets expensive fast, but if you can bi amp the speakers or tri amp if you have that type of speaker, you can also get an EQ/Crossover like the DEQ/X or similar. That will allow you to adjust a lot more like a car stereo does to really maximize your system and match if one amp is overpowering the others. I have that on my system and it's the best piece of electronics in the whole system as far as an audible upgrade. By far the best sonic change next to speakers and/or room accoustics.