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First Watt J2. Sold my VRDs and George Wright 2A3 mono blocks. That good.

I had no idea such a thing exists. This is good news if I want to give it a try without waiting to order some cables. Sounds like I'd put the output from Xilica to channel 1 on the Crown(s) then mess with the menu to send that Chanel one's input to both speaker binding posts. I that how you understand it to work? I've been reading a bit more today on the Internet (scary thought) and I see lots of people saying not to bridge amps. Fair amount of debate, but seems like more against it than for it. Now that I think about it, if they are 8 ohm drivers and it is the parallel wiring that gets me to 4 ohms and thus more power from the amp. Won't an 8 ohm driver driven by a single amp channel present itself to the amp as 8 ohms? Seems like I'll be right back where I started, with the exception of a single channel per driver. Still, I guess that is 215w for one 8 ohm driver versus 215w for two 8 ohm drivers. Thanks!

I don't know. I'd guess no since it doesn't ring a bell, but I honestly don't know.

I know it is Kounter-Klipsch, but I am really liking the open baffle sound. Maybe it is just different not better....and I like making things in my garage/shop. I also think the more equipment in my rack looks tougher, especially if rack mounted like the Crowns. After all it is about looks not sound, right? 😁

Never. I read somewhere that having amp power 2 times the max of the driver was a good general rule. The individual 15" 8 ohm driver are rated at 300W max. So since I already had one 1002 XLS and it was what it was. Buying a 2nd and bridging made sense at the time given my limited knowledge, sale price and knee jerk reaction to more is better....like Tim you mentioned. I was just trying to get above the 215w mark that it was in plain vanilla mode. I really didn't need anything more. Figured I could sell the extra amp if no difference but be better off in my mind for having at least tried. I'm only using the Crown's for the LF. I've got Nelson Pass First Watt J2 for the HF. I'm VERY VERY happy with the FW J2 driving the HF sections of both speakers. I'm more than happy with the single Crown on the 4X 15"ers. I have a much more amazing sound stage than I ever did with Khorns. Mostly due to Chris's help, the 2-way active set up and getting phase/delay/etc. dialed in. I'm really talking about that last 5% or less. I'm really just finding a reason to mess with things and try to learn a little in the process. Appreciate the help from all. That is what I thought given my limited knowledge. Two stereo amps acting like a "bigger" mono block pair. I though this was a way to go from an 8 ohm load to a 4 ohm load and not hurt the drivers or amp. I expected to need to turn the amp's gain control knobs down if I kept the same settings in Xilica. I did not. I actually did not notice any different "loudness" to my ears going form 8 ohm wiring single amp to 4 ohm wiring dual bridged amps. That seemed odd to me. However I've not actually measured the output yet.

I have. I'm probably not being clear. I started out asking the basic question in a hypothetical way. I should have started form the beginning saying I already have done the following. 1 amp driving 2 speakers with dual 15" 8 Ohm drivers each wired in series 1 amp driving 2 speakers with dual 15" 8ohm drivers each wired in parallel (seemed "better" but questioned distortion after 20 minutes or so) 2 amps each bridged, driving 1 speaker each wired in parallel (seemed like no difference from the 1 amp series experiment) Prior to today I though my only option was to bridge. Similar to having mon-block amps, of which I have had several sets...but always tube based. In my mind it was one physical box (bridged) per speaker the only variable at that point was parallel or series. It never dawned on me that I could have two stereo amps and use one amp channel per actual driver (to be painfully clear not bridging them but using each channel for each woofer). But if I do that I need, or I think I need, 4 balanced XLR wires (2 right and 2 left) one for each amp channel which in turn goes to each woofer (2 right and 2 left). How to do this? In the RCA wire days I'd have use a Wye cable, but my gut say don't do that with balanced connections. All help appreciated. I'm probably making more complicated that necessary. Just tell me what to try next with 4 amp channels and 4 woofers. I'm on board with giving up on bridging the two amps.

The Crown XLS in question have clear marketing for bridging, provide an LCD menu system to set them up that way and mark the back speaker terminals for bridging. They seem to almost beg you to try it. I'm happy to go back to what I had and return the 2nd amp. Or try something besides bridging the two. With 4 channels of identical amp power and 4 woofers it seems like 1 woofer per channel is the next logical test. I'm just unclear on how to make the single right output and single left output feed 2-channels in each amp. Is this worth perusing or should I just go back to 1 amp, 1 channel per dual woofers at 8 ohms? If for no other reason than to experiment I'd like to try one amp channel per woofer if that is reasonable.

Not really. I think I suffer a bit from always thinking there is something better around the corner. Or what if this, maybe that, perhaps this and that. Maybe it was just expectation bias but I did think I heard an improvement with the single amp and switching from series to parallel wiring. I also believe after 20 minutes or so I detected some distortion. That made me think that while the reduced load from 8 to 4 ohms let the amp shine a bit more it also made it work harder than it should driving 4 X 15" woofers. These are open baffle mind you so not efficient horn loaded bass. See picture below. So I jumped to the conclusion that more is better and that two amps bridged over one amp driving two channels was a simple and relatively cheap thing to try. My thinking was that 215w@8 Ohms vs 1100@4 Ohms Bridged would be a fairly straight forward solution.

Thanks Chris, as usual. Is that the same thing @jjptkd was saying in a different way? That is 2 speakers, two woofers each. Two amps 2 channels each so: Amp1/Channel1 to Speaker1 Woofer 1 Amp1/Channel2 to Speaker 1 Woofer 2 Amp2/Channel1 to Speaker 2 Woofer 1 Amp2/Channel2 to Speaker 2 Woofer 2 That all makes sense if it is better for the amp to not be running in Bridged mode for some reason (resistance, current, what have you) I don't fully understand. But I can't see how to easily get, say, the right LF single output to Amp1 Channel 1 and Channel 2 in my pea-brain. Not to add too many wrinkles...but in the interest of full disclosure I saw a good deal and already bought the 2nd identical amp. So originally I had one, single amp (Crown XLS 1002 specs above in first post). Running Channel 1 to right speaker (dual 15" woofers) wired in series and Channel 2 to left speaker (dual 15" woofers) wired in series. Now I have two Crown XLS 1002 amps. So buying a "bigger single amp" is not really in the cards. The hand I am dealt is 2 identical amps with the specs above and wondering what my best options is. Maybe my expectations were a bit to high. I hastily bridged the two amps and rewired from Series to Parallel and honestly don't notice any difference. From memory, months back, when I had the single amp and experimented with series vs parallel I noticed what I thought was quite a bit more authority in the low end. Thoughts?

Interesting. I had not thought of that. How does it work? From the single speakers standpoint do I just run Amp 1 Channel 1 to one, single, woofer then Amp1 Channel 2 to the OTHER single woofer in the same physical speaker box? for the full picture I have all balanced connections from preamp to Xilica 8080 to amp(s). Having trouble seeing in my minds eye how I get say the right LF signal into Amp 1's channel 1 and channel 2 without splitting that single Right out into two via a wye cable or the like. I'm not sure I have enough line out's on the Xilica to map the right LF signal to two distinct outputs. Am I making sense?

Not very helpful. I'm looking for some understanding. Some context. The why. To be clear we are in 2021 so I think we all get the stereo part. That means two physical wooden boxes with "things" that make noise inside. One on the right and one one the left. I'm talking about one physical speaker. So lets just call it the right speaker. Forget the HF for the time being it is all sorted out with its own amp. Now we are down to one speaker (the right) and only the LF. That leaves two 15" woofers for that single right speaker. Make sense? One amp, to one speaker's LF only. That LF happens to be dual 15" woofers.

To start out with I know next to nothing about volts, ohms, resistance, parallel, series, etc. so give the the layman's explanation please. I'm playing around with my first crack at dual woofers. They are 15 inches each and say 8ohms 300 watts max on the back. The little bit I do know centers around how to wire them up....series vs parallel. Note at this point I'm only concerned with the woofers and they have their own amp(s). 2-way system, separate amps for HF and LF. Back in my tube amp days when the speaker itself did not change but the amp had 4/8/16 ohm taps and somebody asked which should I use the answer always seemed to be try it and see which you like best. In my current situation the solid state amp has only one way to hook up the speakers, but I can change the speakers from parallel to series. I have in fact tried both and seemed to like parallel better, but in not too long things started to sound a bit distorted, so I quickly switched back to series. I'm slightly confused in the picture below that the amplifier shows 8 Ohms in both. From memory I thought by changing the speaker's from say 8 to 4, the amp was able to "give" more power but it had to work "harder" to do it. So you typically needed a more powerful amp for lower Ohm speakers. I also though it was that amp that was seeing either 4 or 8 Ohms due to the wiring of the speakers. Is the picture wrong or my understanding of what is going on? Since I liked the parallel wiring better, my though was to by a second identical amp and run them each in bridged mode and wiring in parallel. What, if anything, is wrong with that line of thinking? Amp's info: power output: 215 watts x 2 at 8 ohms 350 watts x 2 at 4 ohms 550 watts x 2 at 2 ohms 700 watts x 1 at 8 ohms in bridged mode 1100 watts x 1 at 4 ohms in bridged mode

PMs answered, everything shipped. Additions and subtractions made. New price any 10 CDs shipped to you for $25. See first post for details. Make me an offer for big numbers! Thanks to all who have helped out so far.

If you are looking to literally be cool, check out the RPi case from Flirc. The entire case acts as a heat sink. In my room the Flirc pi run about 10 degrees Celsius cooler than the other case as reported by the internal system temp.