Bi-amping...can it damage your speakers?

[kulter]

Hello people
Nice to have found you
To my question... is there any way bi-amping can damage the way the speakers are suposed to sound (apart from leaving the gold plates on -which IS NOT the case ).
I have been recently messing around with my speakers and trying different sorts of things. One of them was bi-amping them on my pioneer vsx-915 receiver. My speakers are the 601's s3. So after bi-amping them i noticed the tweeter sounded somehow harsher with a kind of whistle-ing at the very high frequencies. The bass on the other hand was clearer than before. The connections were done by the book and as they were suposed to be.
So i went back to my original bi-wired setup but didn't notice any changes on the tweeter performance (the harshiness was still there, the bass nevertheless returned to its previous state). Just to set things straight, it is not a dramatic change but more like a subtle kind of thing that i just happened to notice.
Has anyone of you experienced something like this before. The speakers are new and certainly within the warranty period. Could it be the speakers' fault. Is this something B&W speakers run through after a period of time, just like say the burn in period (as i said the speakers are new)? Could it be something else?
Any opinions would be more then welcome and sorry if my english is not very good

[misterdoggy]

im not that familiar with the 600 series, but would think biamping would be more for 800 series. If the speakers were made for biamping then it should not affect the tweeter to distort. I would look somehwhere else if the tweeter works fine with one amp.

At Abbey road studios they bi amp 800d's with cam400's but this is a whole complex other system.

[Aussie Geoff]

Kulter,

The 600 series is designed to be bi-wired / bi-amped and B&W recommend bi-amping... The crossover will filter out sounds not for the tweeter whether bi-wired / bi-amped or single wired...

Now too loud a treble - especially clipping treble will damage any tweeter. Clipping squares off the sine-waves making up musical notes and this sqauring off translates to lots of higher frequency overlays. So interestingly clipping midrange and bass can generate lots of trebble distortion energy at higher power levels than any normal music and blow tweeters. A reciever or low powered amplifer is in fact more likely to clip than a more powerful / or higher current amplifier which has greater reserves of power. So it is (just) possible that you have damaged the tweeters through clippinng and very loud treble.... Usually just one would go though..

However more likely this is subjective thing you have only noticed because you were listenning so carefully after-biwiring for differences in the sound... Easy to tell if you take one of the speakers into the store and listen compared to another...

Geoff

[dknightd]

If anything biamping speakers is better for them. Like ausie says the real danger is single amping and having your amp clip. In most cases a clipped signal from a low power amp is more likely to hurt a tweater. That said, I'm not familiar with your amp, it is possible to send too much power to speakers.
If the amps you are using are rated for less than the speakers can handle
then amp clipping is your biggest worry. If the amps can put out more than
the speakers can handle then speaker clipping might be an issue.

Likely as said above, your speakers are fine you were just listening more
carefully than usual. If you are concerned take them back and compare
to a "store fresh" demo pair.

[kulter]

First of all, let me thank you for the answers

It's good to hear than bi-amping can't damage that easily a good pair of speakers. I don't understand completely the clip-ing thing (but I do have an idea of what it is about :roll: ). Looking back at it I don't think it is the case (I may be wrong though). You see I noticed the change the moment I turned the amp on after bi-amping, at a very moderate volume. As mentioned before my amp is a Pioneer with 7x100w power@8ohms (although tests i've read before purchasing it, showed 7x70w clear power delivered to each channel). So i may have underpowered the tweeters but not by much and i'm sure i didn't overpower them (nor have played them loud in bi-amping).

However there is an interesting fact I would like to share with you. Four days ago i purchased the LCR60 S3 center speaker to match the 2 front speakers. The center speaker has the exact same tweeter but it sounds sweeter than the tweeters of the 601s. The fact is that the LCR is brand new so it needs to work at least 50 hrs before i should make any comparisions, though, surprisingly it sounds better on the highs (can't say the same about the lows :B ).
The idea of getting the speakers in a store and compare them with another pair of 601s is what i probably should do though.
Again thank you for taking the time and adressing my questions. :T

[Kevin P]

What were you bi-amping the speakers with? You mentioned a Pioneer VSX-915, but to bi-amp you need another amp (as opposed to bi-wiring), so what were you using? The problem could lie there. Also, which amp were you using to drive the woofers vs. the tweeters?

[kulter]

Kevin
The Pioneer vsx-915 offers a bi-amping option without the need of using a second amplifier. The manual stated that there was no difference on which channel is being used on what frequency as long as the right order (meaning correct polarity) was held. My setup - The tweeters were connected on the front channel and the lows on the other channel.
I'm glad for once i don't have a multibuck soundsystem, rather then messing around with a really expensive one :B