Ah, but it's not that simple. Now comes the task of calibrating the crossover to your speakers; making sure that the drivers are sent the specific frequencies their designers intended, and that slopes the rate at which the transition between the frequencies occur, and how much they overlap are correctly set. These adjustments are key to not only optimum performance, but system safety; operating a driver beyond its range will likely result in its failure.
Maybe you've read the book, "Poof the Mangled Driver"? Ok, so what about just using two amplifiers and forgetting about the electronic crossover? Simply using two amplifiers is not true bi-amping and does not offer the same advantages; we still face the limitations of the passive crossover.
What about the notion that bi-amping reduces stress on the amplifiers since they are powering only limited frequency ranges? That would be true in a true bi-amp configuration where the frequencies are split ahead of the amplifiers, but in a passive environment both amplifiers receive a full range signal from the preamp and dump that power into the speakers, regardless of whether one is connected to the tweeter or woofer inputs.
The only benefit and it marginal at best is simply the additional power offered by the second amp. Lastly and maybe most importantly , the idea of using different types of amplifiers is a real issue. It has long been thought that the ideal situation was to use a sweet, refined low powered amp in top tubes, for instance , teamed up with a powerful usually solid state amp to control the bass.
This may indeed produce nice extreme top and bottom, but rarely did the two disparate sonic characteristics of the two dissimilar amplifiers mesh well in the critical midrange area. Further, matching signal level between both amplifiers extremely difficult, maybe impossible without sophisticated measurement equipment. So, more often than not, pseudo bi-amping, or poorly executed true bi-amping causes more problems than it cures. In most cases, I am not a fan of bi-amping a high end audio or video systems.
As we have seen, it can be a fairly complex not to mention expensive modification. Proper implementation requires the use of multiple amplifiers and an outboard electronic crossover. Bi-amping is running two sets of wires, two positive and two negative for a total of four conductors from two separate amplifier channels to two separate sets of binding posts on each speaker. So if you only have the usual one set of binding posts, one positive and one negative, then you will not be able to bi-amp your speakers.
Why two sets of binding posts? In the case of our Verus II Grand Towers , the top set of posts power the tweeter and two midrange drivers and the bottom set of binding posts power the two lower woofers.
Keep in mind, if you do want to bi-amp your speakers make sure to remove the jumpers between the two sets of binding posts so the there is no longer any connection between them. One other thing, you will want to use the same gauge and roughly equal length wire runs for all eight conductors. So there will be two conductors coming off the positive and negative terminal of that amplifier.
You can also read a highly technical look at bi-wiring over at Audioholics here. With bi-amping you really are doubling the total power to your speakers since you are using two separate channels for each set of binding posts.
Since you are providing your speakers with more power, the benefits you can realize are an increase in overall output, less chance of blowing drivers through underpowering, more amp headroom for a cleaner and fuller sound, more bass extension from woofers which are more power hungry.
So essentially, bi-amping is way to increase the power delivered to your speakers with your existing receiver or amp without going out and buying a more expensive one. Another thing to consider is that you have also increased the efficiency of your speakers because you split the crossover network and you are no longer wasting power that will end up being filtered out to prevent your tweeter from producing low frequencies and your woofer from producing high frequencies.
There are actually a few different ways to bi-amp your speakers. Passive bi-amping is what I described before, merely hooking up two channels from your amplifier to each speaker. However, the consensus is the most effective and pronounced way to go is to actively bi-amp. In this type of bi-amping the crossovers are active and split the signal into high and low frequencies before it goes to the amplifier and then from there the signal goes to the speakers.
But if you have the skill to get it right, the result can indeed be a marked improvement in terms of the frequency range, power and integration of the drivers. But when both high and low frequencies travel down the same wire at the same time, they can interfere with each other in unexpected ways.
Many multichannel AV receivers have seven or more built-in amplifiers — one for each potentially connected speaker. However, because of limited space and other considerations, most home theaters and most music listening environments can only comfortably accommodate a standard 5.
This means there are excess amplifier channels in your receiver that are not being used. When an electrical current i. Conversely, when a magnetic field is passed through a wire, an electrical current is generated. Low frequencies such as the sound of a bass drum need large amounts of current to move the woofer in the speaker and push air across the room thus producing sound waves we can hear. Nonetheless, both cause magnetic fields to be generated in the wire. The problem is this: If that thud of a bass drum and the ting of a triangle are sent down the same wire at the same time, there is potential for audio degradation of the sound of the triangle.
The solution is to separate the two signals via bi-amping — something that greatly reduces interactions between the two signals. The internal crossover network in the speaker restricts low frequencies from traveling through the high-frequency wire, thus smoothing out the signal path for the tweeter. By the way, you may think that bi-amping seems like a good way to make your speakers louder. After all, two watt amplifiers powering a speaker should make it sound twice as loud, right?
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