Amp and a center channel speaker. Bridge or Biamp?

[Johnny Canuck]

Looking for a little advice please. If you are going to use a bridgable amp to power a center channel speaker that has two sets of binding posts, do you get a Y splitter and run the amp stereo to the amp or should I bridge the amp and run a single rca? I am thinking bridging the amp may make the center channel too loud compared to the rest of the system and have also read the bridging sacrifices some SQ. .

 

[zildjian]

You need to consider what specific amp you are using and what speaker and how their impedance matches up. For example, if you have an amp that will do fine into 4ohm per channel when driving two channels, but needs 8 ohms into one bridged channel, and you have a center channel that has 4 ohms impedance per unbridged input, you would be better off driving the two unbridged inputs each with their own amp channel rather than bridging into too low of impedance for your bridged amp and overheat your amp.
Brad

 

[zildjian]

have also read the bridging sacrifices some SQ. .

not with a good amp. oh wait, all amps sound the same...
just try it and see how you think it sounds.

 

[j_garcia]

Bridging vs separate channels makes no difference, as the speaker is going to draw the same amount of total current regardless of what the amp is providing. It will not be louder once it is calibrated, no matter which way you hook it up.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I have a NAD 2200 amp and a Polk CSi5 center channel speaker. Does that help? Thanks guys.

 

[zildjian]

I don't know the specs of the amp or speaker. Look to see what impedance each section of your speaker is, you might have to email Polk to find out the individual impedances, and also find out what it is bridged. Then likewise for your amp, see what impedance load it will take bridged and see how that compares to the bridged impedance of your center speaker. My center channel can be hard to drive. I have a DefTech CLR 3000 center, which has impedances of 6 ohms for the tweeter section and 3.8 ohms for the midrange section. I use 400watt x 2 stereo amps to drive each section since the combined impedance when bridged would be below 8 ohms, too low for using the bridged output from the amp. I'm sure it's overkill powerwise to have 400 watts just to the tweeters, definately, but it sounds great.