setup ?

[Rolyasm]

I have never used an amp and pre before but just by the name (preamp), I Imagine when setting up you connect the Preamp to the amp, then the amp to the speakers. Is this correct? If so, then one of the jobs of the amp is to make sure the signal sent doesn't get jumbled and mixed in its circuits. It isn't just a power machine. Anyway, say you have a 200 w/channel amp and a receiver with 100w/channel. I have heard of biamping and biwiring. Is it possible to send both a channel from the amp and a channel from the reciever to the speaker giving you in essence 300w/channel? So if I had a three channel amp but a 7 channel receiver, could I utilize some of the "left over" channels in the receiver? Thanks
Roly

[PewterTA]

You can and can't do what you are wanting to do.

You can use both the amp and receiver to connect to your speakers. So have your amp drive your fronts and the rears driven by the receiver. That's perfectly acceptable. You can also run the amp to the say the bass speakers and the receiver to the mid/treble of your speaker providing you have the two sets of binding posts to do this. This is psuedo bi-amping, because you are not really splitting the signal before it hits the amps... I will warn you that while this is a decent idea, it will not give you the absolute sound you are thinking of. You have to realize that both the amp and receiver will "process" a signal differently and you will get a little bit different of a sound over if you just use one or the other.

I do not recommend using both the receiver and amp connected to one set of binding posts on your speaker. It won't give you the 300 watts you are thinking of and will probably make the sound a lot worse.

Best thing to do is experiment and find the best setup to your ears. So if (for example) the amp powering your left and right main speakers, and receiver powering your Center, RR/RL/BR/BL surrounds sounds the best, than by all means go for it!

Bi-wiring is running to sets of wires from the amp or receiver to both sets of binding posts on your speaker. The actual change in sound quality will be on a per-listener basess. I for one have yet to hear any real difference (very very minor) with any bi-wire type of cable, over a good quality (thick) speaker cable.

[Rolyasm]

I was just thinking before I got to your last sentence that probably the increase people get from bi-wiring is that now they are using, say (2) twelve gauge wire, instead of one. They are doubling their wire size in essence. Thanks for the input. If it won't fry my speakers, maybe I'll give it a shot someday when I get my system all configured. Thanks.

[PewterTA]

The main technical reason people use is since the signal goes through the speaker and comes back through the crossover and into the speaker line, it will cause a degredation of the incoming signal from the amp to the more noticeable mid/hi frequencies. By Bi-wiring, you make the length of the cable so much longer that the "feedback" (for lack of a better word) from the bass drivers only goes through the wire and degrades so much that it never reaches the terminals of the amplifier. So the mid/hi frequencies don't suffer degredation from the bass driver.

Or supposedly something like that.

[chrispy35]

If the wire you're using is able to degrade/diminish the 'feedback' by a noticeable amount, what's it doing to the signal on the way _to_ the driver from the amp?