Question On Biamping

[JKnPA]

Food for though............... maybe!

Since Peng and Mtrycrafts wish to continue........... ???
I agree with Peng....... forget about both articles, we all seem to interpret them differently.
My main point was the 'IMD' caused by the 'unlinear speaker impedance' in conjunction with the filters(passive). I know both of you are familiar with these issues. I want to include this link again, for those unaware of the problems of speakers/filters, and trying to maintain a 'linear impedance'
over the listening range of the source.
For those interested read section 3..........'Speaker effects on filter response'. Note figures 3.2 and 3.4, this shows you how difficult it is to maintain a linear impedance versus frequency.
I believe this is the cause of 'IMD', if these circuits are poorly designed. That is all I was trying to state...........
http://sound.westhost.com/lr-passive.htm#3.0

John

 

[PENG]

So, is B&W talking about a different harmonic distortion? In either case, it can be measured no matter how it is sliced and should be able to show the differences from bi-wiring. Now, numbers I would look better

Yes, it was harmonic distortion that I thought they were talking about but the specific example (just an example) they cited was the non-linear impedance of the voice coil that resulted in such distortion. Please be reminded that a non-sinusoidal waveform can be expressed as an infinite series of sinusoidal waveforms consisting of the fundamental frequency and multiples of the fundamental frequency. Depending on the shape of the waveform (e.g. a clipped sine wave), it may have a d.c. component in it. Again, it is the non-linearity that resulted in those harmonic distortion in the cited example. I am not sure if you are familiar with Fourier series but if you are interested in understanding harmonics, you should read up on Fourier Analysis, it is a great mathematical tool for analyzing harmonics, as well as signals between the time and frequency domains. I didn't appreciate the work of Fourier until years after graduation when I began to realize how important his work was in the world of audio and telecommunication technology.

Lastly, I agreed with you as I said before, the claimed effect should be measurable. May be we should email B&W. or others (they are not the only one who made such claims) and ask them if they have any supporting data.

 

[PENG]

Since Peng and Mtrycrafts wish to continue........... ???
I agree with Peng....... forget about both articles, we all seem to interpret them differently.
My main point was the 'IMD' caused by the 'unlinear speaker impedance' in conjunction with the filters(passive). I know both of you are familiar with these issues. I want to include this link again, for those unaware of the problems of speakers/filters, and trying to maintain a 'linear impedance'
over the listening range of the source.
For those interested read section 3..........'Speaker effects on filter respose'. Note figures 3.2 and 3.4, this shows you how difficult it is to maintain a linear impedance versus frequency.
I believe this is the cause of 'IMD', if these circuits are poorly designed. That is all I was trying to state...........
http://sound.westhost.com/lr-passive.htm#3.0

John

John, that article gets deep into the details. I am going to save it for weekend reading. The example B&W used was the non-linear impedance of the bass driver's voice coil, nothing to do with the passive filter network. That is not to say the filter does not play a part, B&W clearly cited the voice coil just as an example. Thank you for the link, it looks very interesting, and I will read it for sure.

 

[JKnPA]

Website...............

I'll give you the link for the entire website.
This is the type of technical website I was looking for that includes
charts, graphs, and the calculations.
I was trying to stress the importance of not only the speaker driver, but the 'Xover filters' and other compensating networks that may be included.
Most people are unaware that there is more in that box than the speaker/s........................

http://sound.westhost.com/articles.htm

Jk

 

[mtrycrafts]

May be we should email B&W. or others (they are not the only one who made such claims) and ask them if they have any supporting data.

Well, since I sent an email to Axiom and waiting for more info, I will do the same for B&W.

 

[Reorx]

NO, THE HORSE IS NOT DEAD!

So ultimatly, in laymens terms...
bi-wiring yields no audible differences...
Unless you have your high and low freq. on seperate wires via a active xover, in conjunction with bi-amping, and decent speakers.

With pro-speakers, bi-wiring and bi-amping is a neccessity, and yields larger benifits. Per personal experience and this previously posted link. http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/biamping.html

But since most people don't use Pro speakers for their home theaters, the whole conversation was geared towards consumer level equipment.

 

[ronnie 1.8]

I found this article on 'Bi-amping'.... maybe it might help!
Maybe not.............

If anyone has any other articles on the subject, I would be interested in reading them!
Jk
http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/biamping.html

This article was helpful, as it provided a definition of what bi-amping is. I have the Denon 3805. Bi-amping may be a fun/interesting project, as I am not using a second pair of surround speakers, and I like to undestand all features of my equipment. Has anyone ever used the bi-amp feature on the Denon AVR's, and heard a difference? Can anyone describe what I may expect to hear if I were to bi-amp my 3805?

 

[Nuglets]

I don't see how bi-wiring could prevent that IM distortion they're postulating. It doesn't matter where you split the wires. Having separate speaker cables from the amp's binding posts outward won't prevent one current path from stealing amperage from the other once you get to a single current path inside the single amp. Unless there are separate amplification circuits inside the amplifier that lead to the separate binding posts, it's all the same to the electrons.

I am not 100% about anything that I'm about to say but I could probably get the information very easily at my university Physics laboratory. I believe that even though each wire is connected to the same post on the amplifier, there would be a difference in resistance running through each individual wire because there is a different crossover on the other end of each wire. Electrons will take the path of least resistance and if each crossover is presenting a different resistance then the overall result would be that more electrons(ie: a higher current) could be flowing through the wire with less resistance.

Again, I'm not 100%, but it is my hypothesis.

EDIT: I just finished reading and see you are past that discussion so just keep on going, this is very interesting.

 

[USER1102]

I have a Yamaha HTR-6090 with an ouput of 120Wx7 channels and Energy RC-50's (amoung others).

I have implemented biamping on my system with real-world results and it really is a no-brainer IMO.

Each RC-50 has two sets of input terminals and my Yammy supports byamping. Instead of using the second rear output for presence speakers, the ouput can be toggled to output the lower half frequency range to my RC-50's, while the original output to the tower is clipped back to output the top half.

This effectively doubles the output to these towers, from 120W each to 240W.

The difference in output is very noticable.

There seems to be a lot of confusion in this thread - like as if biamping is an 'experimental' technique, but it is very commonly implemented.

Of course your speakers need to support biamping in order to do this effectively.