1095 w/ 1080 biamping 802's?

[Taco]

I'm looking into adding a 1080 (2x200watts) to my 1066 preamp and 1095 (5x200watts). My thought is to biamp with the 1095 LR and the 2 channel 1080 running to each 802 so that each 802 is getting 400 watts. Does this make sense or is there a better suggestion out there.

Thanks for all your help.

[Andrew Pratt]

Before spending money on the 2 channel amp why not try bi amping with four channels from your 5 channel amp to see if the sonic improvements justify the cost of the 2 channel amp.

[Scarp]

Bi-amping in B&W is not needed and usually doesnt give you the good quality sound you want. A lot of people warn against bi-amping B&W speakers.

I definitly would suggest getting a 1090 instead of two 1080's. The 1090 is a lot more musically sounding and very very good on 802's.
The 1090 is actually a dual mono block design in one chassis, so dual tranformers, etc ... it can easily handle 802's. The 1090 is actually one of the few low priced amps that can handle an 802. It outplays much more expensive Classe amps !

The 1095 also has two transformers, so if you connect your 802 to that then do it in the following way: put the left 802 to on the left front in the amp and the right 802 in the right surround (!). What you achieve with this is that when u run in stereo mode, the 1095 uses one transformer for each speaker. The gives the amp much more headroom and could be sufficient for difficult speakers as the 802. This gives better results than bi-amping! Since its not really the watts that it needs, but the strength and handling. You stress the amp a lot more when bi-amping it.

(btw, always connect B&W speakers bi-wired).