Bi/tri-amping stereo speakers with a 5.1/7.1 receiver

[beemer_cruisin]

Don't waste your time or your wire. It won't make any difference. All the amps in your receiver are driven by the same power supply. You can't get any more power from the supply than it can put out no matter how many amps you use. And, obviously, more power isn't likely to make any difference if you could get it.

I want to make sure I understood what you said. So if I only hook up the 2 speakers using 1 set of outputs (ie. front right/left) the power supply would send out the same power to 2 outputs as if I had hooked up 4 outputs (ie. front right/left & assignable rear right/left).

I have done some research, and the recommended setup to bi-amp w/ the 354 is to assign the rears w/ the front speaker sound signal at the speaker crossover point. In effect running a separate feed to the speaker for the highs and the mids/lows.

For right now the RF-82s are only speakers I am running on the receiver until I buy a surround system, with the RF-82s used for music listening then later adding a surround system for movies.

So is bi-amping really useless for my setup?

Thanks

 

[bandphan]

So is bi-amping really useless for my setup?

Thanks

in a nut shell, yes. Aside from the amp issues that are being discussed, your crossover is passive and ungarnered for the application.

 

[anm]

bi-amping will help but do you need that help? Why do you want to bi-amp?
Are you able to play loud enough with the current power? If yes, than you probably do not need more amplification. To have enough power to play at a loud level, and head room for another 10db for dynamics in the music. I am sure you won't want to watch a movie at too loud a level. Though you may like your music to be loud once in a while.
Calculate your power requirements here - http://www.crownaudio.com/apps_htm/designtools/elect-pwr-req.htm

bi-amping one channel to tweeters and another to array of woofers is not much of a help as tweeters consume much less power. It would only help if you could power each woofer separately. Not sure if passive crossover in your speakers would allow that. See this link - http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm#basics it says for any useful bi-amping, you need to disconnect your passive crossover. I am sure you don't want to do that!

It would make a lot of sense if somehow power from two different channels gets summed up, and go to your speaker on a single wire. I think Onkyo *claims* it can be done on some of its models - 2 rear channels get useless in this mode and their power gets summed up in the fronts.

Another way to bi-amp is - have different amplifiers for each speaker. You may buy single channel amps, or multiple stereo amps that can be bridged. 354 has a pre-out.

I was in exactly similar state of mind as you, but above is what I have learnt in last few months. I am a newbie too

regards

So is bi-amping really useless for my setup?

Thanks

 

[anm]

One thing I do not understand in my own post above:
If tweeters consume less power than woofers, then how is the calculator working? Is it assuming a fixed freq like 1kHz? May need more power if I am talking SPL level of bass??
Should frequency also be an input to the calculation?

 

[PENG]

One thing I do not understand in my own post above:
If tweeters consume less power than woofers, then how is the calculator working? Is it assuming a fixed freq like 1kHz? May need more power if I am talking SPL level of bass??
Should frequency also be an input to the calculation?

You should email Crown for an answer. I guess they use a noise tone, probably a white noise, but that's just a guess.

 

[anm]

Can someone provide a better calculator/ equation/ formula to reach power calculations with frequency too taken into consideration?

regards

You should email Crown for an answer. I guess they use a noise tone, probably a white noise, but that's just a guess.

 

[fmw]

So is bi-amping really useless for my setup?

Thanks

Read my post above where discuss pro audio biamplification. That is biamplification. What you want to do is not nor can it have any audible effect on your system. To biamplify you would need to connect an active crossover unit between the preamp and the the power amps and disconnect the passive crossovers in your speaker cabinets, replacing them with the active unit. Then you would have the isolation and control that biamplification provides. Whether you need that or would benefit from that is a different issue.

But to connect two amplifiers to each side of a passive network accomplishes nothing at all. It is the same thing as bi-wiring except you've added a second amplifier to drive a tweeter that the original amplifier didn't even notice because it requires so little power. It has no audible effect. It is not biamplification, despite what the consumer audio world wants to call it.