Confused about bi amping. Advice please!

[philly]

Ok thanks guys!

 

[ryanosaur]

Even just a well furnished room could be sufficient.

This: I think it was Toole who referred to this as "the stuff of life." Furniture, pillows, nick-knacks, bookshelves, etc...

 

[PENG]

Ok thanks guys!

You can thank yourself by asking more people for opinions. By now, you must realize the fact that the "I am told....." are in most cases just hearsay that cannot always be relied on. You have been told just in the last 24 hours different opinions on passive biamp, active biamp (implied, by people like TLSGuy), adding external amps, using Y connectors etc... If the AV10 does not allow the flexibility to reassign all channels, it is most likely because of cost, and that they know very few people will have such a need. That is, if they really want to implement total flexibility, they could have done it easily. In any case, using Y-split connectors is perfectly fine in your setup that includes the Amp 10. The amp10 has very good input impedance, according to the specs:

Input sensitivity/impedance: 1.4 V / 47 kΩ/kohms (UNBALANCED)
2.8 V / 100 kΩ/kohms (BALANCED)

I'll give you my opinion as well, that is, given you have 16 channels of amps and you apparently only need 7 or 8, you can definitely try passive bi-amp is you are willing to spend time and money and end up potentially (most likely) have nothing to gain except a big spaghetti wire mess. I disagree with TLSGuy though, that is, there is no harm doing what you want to do, as long as you wire everything correctly. You must know already that you have to make sure the wiring polarity are correct for every pair and the jumpers on the speakers must be removed, etc....

 

[philly]

You can thank yourself by asking more people for opinions. By now, you must realize the fact that the "I am told....." are in most cases just hearsay that cannot always be relied on. You have been told just in the last 24 hours different opinions on passive biamp, active biamp (implied, by people like TLSGuy), adding external amps, using Y connectors etc... If the AV10 does not allow the flexibility to reassign all channels, it is most likely because of cost, and that they know very few people will have such a need. That is, if they really want to implement total flexibility, they could have done it easily. In any case, using Y-split connectors is perfectly fine in your setup that includes the Amp 10. The amp10 has very good input impedance, according to the specs:

Input sensitivity/impedance: 1.4 V / 47 kΩ/kohms (UNBALANCED)
2.8 V / 100 kΩ/kohms (BALANCED)

I'll give you my opinion as well, that is, given you have 16 channels of amps and you apparently only need 7 or 8, you can definitely try passive bi-amp is you are willing to spend time and money and end up potentially (most likely) have nothing to gain except a big spaghetti wire mess. I disagree with TLSGuy though, that is, there is no harm doing what you want to do, as long as you wire everything correctly. You must know already that you have to make sure the wiring polarity are correct for every pair and the jumpers on the speakers must be removed, etc....

Thanks again. Yes, I feel at this point everything is running perfectly and I should just leave it as is. I did watch the video that you posted about biamping. And if there's any benefit to it at all, then I guess I'm reaping it. I should just be content with first world problems!.

 

[TLS Guy]

You can thank yourself by asking more people for opinions. By now, you must realize the fact that the "I am told....." are in most cases just hearsay that cannot always be relied on. You have been told just in the last 24 hours different opinions on passive biamp, active biamp (implied, by people like TLSGuy), adding external amps, using Y connectors etc... If the AV10 does not allow the flexibility to reassign all channels, it is most likely because of cost, and that they know very few people will have such a need. That is, if they really want to implement total flexibility, they could have done it easily. In any case, using Y-split connectors is perfectly fine in your setup that includes the Amp 10. The amp10 has very good input impedance, according to the specs:

Input sensitivity/impedance: 1.4 V / 47 kΩ/kohms (UNBALANCED)
2.8 V / 100 kΩ/kohms (BALANCED)

I'll give you my opinion as well, that is, given you have 16 channels of amps and you apparently only need 7 or 8, you can definitely try passive bi-amp is you are willing to spend time and money and end up potentially (most likely) have nothing to gain except a big spaghetti wire mess. I disagree with TLSGuy though, that is, there is no harm doing what you want to do, as long as you wire everything correctly. You must know already that you have to make sure the wiring polarity are correct for every pair and the jumpers on the speakers must be removed, etc....

What I meant was, is that is harmful as it can happen and has by reports on the forum, that people sometimes do not remove the jumpers and blow up a receiver instantly. So it is a potential hazard without benefit.

 

[philly]

What I meant was, is that is harmful as it can happen and has by reports on the forum, that people sometimes do not remove the jumpers and blow up a receiver instantly. So it is a potential hazard without benefit.

They're definitely removed, i knew that much

 

[dlaloum]

A generic comment about Bi-Amping and my personal experience...

I run a set of Gallo reference 3.2's as my mains
This is a 3 way full range speaker, with a 2nd input for the woofer, allowing bi-amping.
A slightly off thing about the woofer input, is that it bypasses the crossover (pretty normal) - but connects to a secondary voice coil (very unusual)...
So if you feed unfiltered signal to the main inputs, you will be driving the woofer via the crossover, and if you then drive the woofer via the 2nd voice coil, you will be driving it twice, with potentially competing signals.

The recommended method of setting this up (from memory, referring to Anthony Gallo's advice on his speakers circa 15 years ago!) is to set up a low pass filter before the woofer amp, and a high pass filter before the main speaker input - thereby ensuring that you have split the frequency range, and are only forwarding the appropriate frequencies to the relevant drivers.

Gallo even put out a specific woofer amp, designed to handle this task, although any power amp with an appropriate set of filters can do the job.

Various reviews then remarked on improvement experienced - primarily lower deeper bass... but some also talked about cleaner midrange.

Interestingly, even though the speakers were designed for this, and Gallo had a special amp available to do that task, when demoing the speakers at audio shows, Anthony Gallo would demo them without Bi-Amping, and would power them with a very high powered Class D amp (Spectron musician III - 500W@8ohm !!)

Based on all the above, I decided a few years ago (well actually a bit more than a decade!) - to experiment with biamping....
First I tried using a pair of Quad 606 amps, with external filters (Harrisson FMOD inline filters).
The results were positive, but marginal ... possibly psycho acoustic... could I tell the difference in double blind,? Maybe not?

So then I purchased a pair of Crown XLS2500 speakers - I figured that 440W@8ohm would be close enough to the Spectron musician specs.... at about 5% the price.
They also have onboard DSP's which are set up to act as filters and/or crossovers.
I used these to run my speakers in both straight through, and Bi-Amp mode.

All I can say, is that although with the Quad's (135W@8ohm) I felt like there was a marginal improvement.... with the Crowns I felt there was no gain.

So, is there a benefit from the splitting of the frequency range - possibly... but the main difference is by splitting the load, and making it easier for two amps to both run within their performance envelope. - But if you have a single amp with sufficient "grunt" to drive the whole speaker easily, then the gains may well be completely illusory.

The Gallo speakers have impedance on the woofer of 3ohm, and the tweeter drops to 1.6ohm - so they can cause issues with amps that either cannot provide enough current, or get unstable into low impedance loads... - there are many amps that meet that description... and with those amps, bi-amping can result in audible gains.
But if you have amps that provide what the speaker needs with relative ease, then there may not be anything to be gained.

Hope this helps...

 

[PENG]

Thanks again. Yes, I feel at this point everything is running perfectly and I should just leave it as is. I did watch the video that you posted about biamping. And if there's any benefit to it at all, then I guess I'm reaping it. I should just be content with first world problems!.

Just for the record, I didn't post any video, never had.. I might have posted links to other's video but not on this thread so far, and never had on biamp as far as I can remember. There are tons of misinformation on the biamp topic online, as for whatever reasons, most posters don't seem to understand the electrical theories behind it, let alone psychoacoustics.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

My take. Bi-amping passive speakers’ large woofers (dual 10” and dual 12” woofers) using an external amp//EQ can be nice for some people who want to control their large woofers like subwoofers.

I think the B&W 702’s 3 x 6.5” woofers are too small for this. Gotta be larger speakers with at least dual 10” woofers and especially dual 12” woofers.

 

[Mikado463]

While I personally have never bothered with bi-amping I know several members of the Martin Logan group that have actively bi-amped with great results. So, basically 'it all depends' !

 

[ryanosaur]

actively bi-amped with great results

Actively passive?

 

[Mikado463]

Actively passive?

LOL, ahhh fingers on a keyboard, never a good combo for me !

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Actively passive?

Hey, if it works, why not?

 

[PENG]

So, basically 'it all depends' !

I always, almost always, depends!!!

 

[Mikado463]

I always, almost always, depends!!!

yep, it won't be long till we all need them .........

 

[fmw]

Just my obsession and compassion tbh! again when I have that speakers can be biamped, why not?

Because nobody bothered to tell you that biamplification requires disconnecting the crossover network inside your speaker cabinet and replacing it with an external active crossover. Would it sound better? That would depend on how you adjust the active crossover and what better means to you.

If you mean doing amplified biwiring, then, no, it will sound exactly the same because there has been no change in frequency distribution. This nonsense just moves the connections driving the crossover network from the speaker cabinet to the amplifier (s.)

The purpose of all those amplifiers in an AVR is for each one of them in use to drive a separate speaker system.