Bi Amping The Denon 3805 to MA S8 fronts

[RMK!]

I read the article describing Bi-Amping the Denon 3805 to the Front speakers. Has anyone done this? I seems simple enought and I suppose more power delivered to both channels of the fronts would be good but in my case do the Monitor Audio S8's need this? will there be a noticable difference I should just try it since the investment in a couple of cables and connectors isn't that much. I have the following HT setup:

LG44" DLP
Motorola DCT 6412 DVR
Denon 3805 AVR
Denon 3910 DVD
Monitor Audio Silver S8, Ctr, & S6 Rear
Velodyne SPL1200 II SW

 

[warpdrive]

Unless you are going full tilt and using an external electronic crossover, biamping is just a waste of good wire.

 

[nibhaz]

Unless you are going full tilt and using an external electronic crossover, biamping is just a waste of good wire.

Aye, aye I second the motion.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

I spent hours on the Denon biamp experiment...using zone 3 to get more punch to my lows...it sounded awful. Tonal imbalance. and the hum was annoying, especially in my small room, i could hear it very easily. People say to go to +2 on zone 3 volume. why even bother? You can't hear the bass increase until about +7 or +8 and you get hum at that level. Yeah you get more bass, but at the expense of degrading sound quality to ALL of your speakers, just not the fronts. You also can't use the 6.1 channel...The amps in the zone 2 and zone 3 are not as good as the main zone amp..that's why you get a "tonal imbalance"...So many people tried to get rid of the hum...I tried a power conditioner, isolation transformer, tried taking the ground off my wires like someone suggested...nothing helped. people who say they don't have the hum with this "ghetto biamping" method have not hooked it up correctly.

Save yourself some time. Buy a power amp, used like I did, and power your lows with that. I paid $200 for my NAD 2200.

But...if you can handle sound degradation for a bit more bass, go ahead. i wasn't prepared to make that sacrifice.

 

[RMK!]

Any other takes on this????

Since the Bi-amping idea was generated out an Audioholics Review of the 3805, I have to wonder if anyone has done this successfully? On the surface it sure seems like a no-brainer, but not at the expense of sound quality as reported by another poster. I have been considering another AMP as my room is very large and I think I am a little short on power when going LOUD. But I'd rather not add hardware if the "getto amping" will work. Anyone????

 

[RMK!]

Getto Amping

See above.

 

[Duffinator]

Since the Bi-amping idea was generated out an Audioholics Review of the 3805, I have to wonder if anyone has done this successfully? On the surface it sure seems like a no-brainer, but not at the expense of sound quality as reported by another poster. I have been considering another AMP as my room is very large and I think I am a little short on power when going LOUD. But I'd rather not add hardware if the "getto amping" will work. Anyone????

I have mine bi-amped with no hum. Using zone 3 with the volume set at +2. I followed the directions outlined in the Audioholics article and had no problem from the start. With that said I did not hear a big difference with my Mirage 595is speakers. These speakers are 6 ohm and not overly efficient so I thought I'd hear more of a difference. In the end I left them bi-amped and now how two sets of speaker cables running to the speakers. A little tid bit of info, Mirage shows in their manual to cross the speaker wires and I confirmed this with their customer service department. The plus on wire 1 goes to terminal A and the neg. goes to terminal B. The opposite for the other wire. I had my musician friend over when we tried it and we both agreed that crossing the wires gave a cleaner sound. With the wires in the "normal" configuration the mid range was muddier, almost like a vail over the speakers. Mirage does not recommend this on their newer speakers so I'm not sure what was going on with my particular speakers. It gave a slightly more open sound bi-amped than not so I left my system bi-amped.

Like a previous post stated at +7 on the volume you can notice an increase in the bass but at +2 the speakers seemed balanced. My hope with the bi-amp experiment was the speakers would sound clearer and more open. With mine they are, although only slightly, so I have them bi-amped. If you have some extra speaker wire around the house give it a shot. The extra set of speaker wire I'm using cost me less than $10. To me that's worth a try.

 

[RMK!]

Thanks for the info

I have mine bi-amped with no hum. Using zone 3 with the volume set at +2. I followed the directions outlined in the Audioholics article and had no problem from the start. With that said I did not hear a big difference with my Mirage 595is speakers. These speakers are 6 ohm and not overly efficient so I thought I'd hear more of a difference. In the end I left them bi-amped and now how two sets of speaker cables running to the speakers. A little tid bit of info, Mirage shows in their manual to cross the speaker wires and I confirmed this with their customer service department. The plus on wire 1 goes to terminal A and the neg. goes to terminal B. The opposite for the other wire. I had my musician friend over when we tried it and we both agreed that crossing the wires gave a cleaner sound. With the wires in the "normal" configuration the mid range was muddier, almost like a vail over the speakers. Mirage does not recommend this on their newer speakers so I'm not sure what was going on with my particular speakers. It gave a slightly more open sound bi-amped than not so I left my system bi-amped.

Like a previous post stated at +7 on the volume you can notice an increase in the bass but at +2 the speakers seemed balanced. My hope with the bi-amp experiment was the speakers would sound clearer and more open. With mine they are, although only slightly, so I have them bi-amped. If you have some extra speaker wire around the house give it a shot. The extra set of speaker wire I'm using cost me less than $10. To me that's worth a try.

Duffinator,
Good information, than you for taking the time. I'm going to give it a try this weekend.

 

[Duffinator]

hidog1, just curious if you tried bi-amping your S 8's, and if so what you thought. I'm starting to look at new speakers (reading this website is driving me to the poor house) and the new Monitor Audio RS 8's are on my radar screen so I'm curious if you noticed a difference.

Thanks

 

[RMK!]

hidog1, just curious if you tried bi-amping your S 8's, and if so what you thought. I'm starting to look at new speakers (reading this website is driving me to the poor house) and the new Monitor Audio RS 8's are on my radar screen so I'm curious if you noticed a difference.

Thanks

Duffinator,

Well best laid plans, part I haven't had the time to do this yet and part they sound so good now do I really want to screw it up. I have found that I don't really push the system that hard except for certian DVD movies and an occasional "Rock Out" session. I'm in the process of doing a whole new setup for HT that will include much better access to the equipment for playing and tweaking. Right now, with my setup it is a major production just to change a cable. Sorry I could not help you out on this one but if I do it I'll let you know. Re MA, with the RS comming out there are some good deals to be had on the "old" S series.

 

[RMK!]

Misplaced thread (Biamping Denon 3805 to MA S8's)

This really should be in the AMPS thread but moving threads is not a user function (any admin listening?). I biamped the 3805 to my MA S8 fronts yesterday. Out of the gate, and before any settings changes, I noticed an immediate improvement in the detail of the midrange and bass. The soundstage seems larger and I have not noticed any on the negative expressed by others regarding this process. I will be doing more testing tweaking this week but my initial impression is this is a cool feature of the 3805 and up Denon AVR's.

 

[RMK!]

Update for 3805 owners

This really should be in the AMPS thread but moving threads is not a user function (any admin listening?). I biamped the 3805 to my MA S8 fronts yesterday. Out of the gate, and before any settings changes, I noticed an immediate improvement in the detail of the midrange and bass. The soundstage seems larger and I have not noticed any on the negative expressed by others regarding this process. I will be doing more testing tweaking this week but my initial impression is this is a cool feature of the 3805 and up Denon AVR's.

Well after a week of using (movies and music) the new Biamped config. I have to say it was a sucess. I'm hearing more bass and clearer mids and highs out of the fronts. Net/Net, I doubled the wattage to the fronts with no perceptable down side. Just bigger cleaner sound. Not bad for the cost of two speaker wires. Thanks to Clint and his 3805 review for putting me on to this.

 

[mulester7]

"A little tid bit of info, Mirage shows in their manual to cross the speaker wires and I confirmed this with their customer service department. The plus on wire 1 goes to terminal A and the neg. goes to terminal B. The opposite for the other wire. I had my musician friend over when we tried it and we both agreed that crossing the wires gave a cleaner sound. With the wires in the "normal" configuration the mid range was muddier, almost like a vail over the speakers"


.....Duffinator, talk like that will get you hung around here, haha.....