Do you feel bi-amping helps with higher powered amps?

**ZX10 Guy** · 27 March 2005, 12:22 Sunday

I just looked at the picture of the amp you posted. The amp is NOT capable of biamping. The extra terminals provided is to allow BIWIRING. To do true biamping, you need to have a line level crossover between the pre/pro and the amps. You should also use two identical stereo amps to biamp. Tuning the sound with different amps can be difficult and in my opinion not worth the extra work. Other biamp configurations in use is to use two stereo amps but leave the internal passive crossover in the speaker. There is much debate over whether this setup provides any improvements. I've tried it on a set of Mirage M490s and found significant improvements. Others have used multichannel amps to biamp. My personal opinion is that you are not getting one of the benefits of biamping which is to employ additional power supplies. Most multichannel amps draw on a common power supply which negates a big benefit from biamping. I currently biamp my N804s with 2 Carver TFM25s in a vertical biamp configuration. I'm also using them with a Velodyne HGS12II dedicated full time to the speakers. I run the channel that drives the woofers on the N804s through the high pass crossover in the sub. So in essence I'm almost doing a full true biamp configuration in my setup.

**audioqueso** · 28 March 2005, 08:31 Monday

No offense ZX10, but there's a lot of information in your post that wasn't needed. I justed wanted to know whether people with high powered amps noticed the difference because of my situation. I don't want to hear about theories or things like that cause that always leads to other people starting a debate about it when I'm just trying to get people's opinion on their setup.

So... since you have your 804s bi-amp... do you noticed a significant improvement compared to running a single line to a single amp? And I mean a big improvement, not minor please. Thank you.

**DrBoom** · 28 March 2005, 09:08 Monday

And lastly, can you bi-amp on a RB1080. Rotel's site shows it only has two pairs of terminal connections, but if you go to this thread you'll see that Bing Fung posted a picture of his RB1080 with four pairs of terminal plugs. Kinda confused.

No, you can't bi-amp if you have only 1 two channel amp.
Those 4 pairs of binding posts are for bi-wiring (using separate wires for highs/lows), which is not the same as bi-amping (using separate amps for highs/lows).
If you want to bi-amp with RB1080 then you need to get 2 of them.
One will handle the bass for both speakers, the other will deal with the mid/high section.

I haven't heard a bi-amped 804 yet, but I do bi-wire mine, on a single 220W channel from my Parasound 2205 and I never felt the need to bi-amp yet.
Bi-wiring made an improvement, but I can't really remember how big it was since I haven't tried single wire in a long time anymore.
I did compare it when I bought the cables, but I haven't tried it since.

**audioqueso** · 28 March 2005, 18:48 Monday

Oops.. I didn't catch that I typed bi-amp for the RB1080 subject. Yes, I did mean bi-wire. I was just curious about that because Rotel's website only shows 2 pairs of terminal connections, not 4 pairs.

**jahlion** · 28 March 2005, 20:48 Monday

Some amps are bridgeable so you can get the benefit of twice the power without having to deal with crossovers. I plan on using a bridgeable 7.1 channel digital amp in my planned system, with the mains (802D's) using two channels each.

**ZX10 Guy** · 28 March 2005, 22:26 Monday

Originally posted by audioqueso

No offense ZX10, but there's a lot of information in your post that wasn't needed. I justed wanted to know whether people with high powered amps noticed the difference because of my situation. I don't want to hear about theories or things like that cause that always leads to other people starting a debate about it when I'm just trying to get people's opinion on their setup.

So... since you have your 804s bi-amp... do you noticed a significant improvement compared to running a single line to a single amp? And I mean a big improvement, not minor please. Thank you.

I answered your post based on what you said and wanted to clarify some errors or misconceptions that were contained in your post. Sorry...I'll shut up now.

**ZX10 Guy** · 28 March 2005, 22:31 Monday

Originally posted by jahlion

Some amps are bridgeable so you can get the benefit of twice the power without having to deal with crossovers. I plan on using a bridgeable 7.1 channel digital amp in my planned system, with the mains (802D's) using two channels each.

Becareful when you use bridged amps to power speakers with low impedence characteristics. You are summing channels which in essence changes the load impedence the speaker now presents to the two channels. In essence, you are basically wiring the load in parallel which halves the effective impedence. If you look at many amps, they only give ratings for bridged output into 8 Ohms and sometimes into 4 Ohms. If your speaker dips below 4 Ohms, I wouldn't use a bridged amp. I suspect the 802Ds do go far below 4 Ohms. I would mate the speaker up to a good high power high current stereo amp or a set of monoblocks. I would shy away from using a bridged amp to get the power output you seek.

**johan** · 29 March 2005, 14:24 Tuesday

I agree with ZX10. When an amp is bridged not only effect is doubled, also distortion and noise is doubled. Sound will be harsh. Might be usefull to get a passive sub going for the party but not for a Nautilus speaker.

**dortiz** · 29 March 2005, 15:18 Tuesday

results I have noticed... Bi-wired off a bigger amp...not bridged.

Do you feel bi-amping helps with higher powered amps?

Do you feel bi-amping helps with higher powered amps?

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