Would following the directions in the manual (Page 65, "Bi-amp connection"), result in an active bi-amp connection?
Thanks!
No.
Speakers have something called a crossover, which controls much of the speaker's audible behavior. You can have a good speaker with mediocre drivers /cabinet if the crossover is appropriate, and you can have a poor speaker with world class drivers/cabinet if the crossover is poor.
There are two types of crossovers.
Passive crossovers, which resistively attenuate (convert to heat / otherwise store and modify) the amplified (high level/high power) signal before it arrives at the driver.
Active crossovers, which have various forms. They can
-resistively attenuate the line level (low power) signal before it arrives at the amplifier, which is connected directly to the loudspeaker driver. There is an amplifier for every driver.
-electronically boost/attenuate the line level signal before it arrives at the amplifier
-digitally alter the line level signal before it arrives at the amplifier.
Now technically there are also hybrid crossovers, where, say, a tweeter/midrange crossover is passive, but the (tweeter-midrange as one unit)/woofer crossover is active. Implementing a subwoofer to a pair of passive loudspeakers is one such form of a hybrid crossover. Often it's unrefined, but perfectly acceptable given our poor hearing resolution at these frequencies.
Your
Marantz Receiver is not/does not have an active crossover (except at subwoofer frequencies). It does not alter the low level signal arriving at the amplifier stage.
So long as your speakers have a passive crossover it will
always resistively attenuate the amplified (high power) signal. This bi-amping nonsense you're looking into will basically just have different amps send the
same high level signal to different "dividers" in the
passive crossover.
Does it make any sense to you, to send the same signal twice/at the same time to different dividers, when you can send just one signal to the same dividers? The energy arriving at the loudspeaker drivers will be unchanged.
I mean, yes there's a case I can think of where there may be a benefit, but generally that involved poorly designed passive loudspeaker crossovers and/or amplifier channels. Since I was an elementary school kid dreaming of becoming the next Michael Jordan one day, I've always believed in "fundamentals". In my opinion, and this applies to just about everything - getting the fundamentals right is the hard part. Worrying about anything else first, is nonsense.
