Biamping

[gartenman]

no worries...its all good

peace bro'

[DU73]

[Y]

thanks..

[greg928gts]

For me and my living room system, the disadvantage of biamping slightly outweighed the advantage.

Greg

[The Dude]

I think bi amping is something that's for the junkie that after having a pair of speakers and mono blocks, separates, etc... just isn't enough any more, must try the next thing. I someday down the road after trying some more basic stuff, building a custom set of Cornwalls. Trying it to see if I notice the difference or find it an advantage. Regardless of what it takes money, gear wise.

duder

[Islander]

In most cases, bi-amping is very experimental and calls for a lot of knowledge and experience to get right. However, in the case of the Jubilees and JubScalas, it's almost a plug-and-play setup, in that the components have been tested by the top engineering staff at Klipsch and the necessary crossover settings are available.

There are many benefits. Since each amp has only to deal with part of the audioband (the bass amp handles the bottom five octaves and the treble amp handles the top five), distortion is noticeably lower. As well, using active crossovers allows for time-alignment of the woofers and tweeters. It also allows for very complex and accurate EQing that would be difficult or impossible to do with a passive crossover. Finally, the EQ and delay settings are easily changed if a new and better group of settings is found. In the case of the Jubilee and JubScala, the second (and so far latest) settings definitely improved the sound, but the old settings can be kept in memory to easily switch back and forth to be sure which sounds best in a particular room.

Drawbacks? Well, it certainly costs money. It only makes sense to use very good amplification for a high-end setup, which bi-amping surely is, so you need two quality stereo amps or four monoblocks, plus of course the active crossover/processor. The E-V Dx38 is the recommended unit, since Roy Delgado, the Klipsch engineer who co-designed the Jubilee with PWK, uses it in his testing, so the proper crossover program is based on what that unit can do.

One less expensive alternative is the Crown XTi power amps, which have built-in DSP, so they can serve as amps and crossovers. A number of forum members are happily using the Crowns in their systems.

As for me, I'm glad I went ahead with bi-amping, since I can hear the results whenever I turn on my system, and it has turned out to be a set-and-forget operation, with no tweaking after the initial dialing-in, other than the one program update, which took only a few minutes to enter into the Dx38.

[oldenough]

Sure wish I had read-up on this subject before now, I was going to Bi-amp my La scalas or RF-5's and bought a Luxman m-120a pwer amp to use in my Luxman stack. Thought it would be a simple process, seems not so. Must admit though having that extra power from the m-120a has made a dramatic improvement in the RF-5s. I had often wondered about the claims that were made about more is better (regarding amp power), seems to have worked in my case. ]

[Islander]

Must admit though having that extra power from the m-120a has made a dramatic improvement in the RF-5s. I had often wondered about the claims that were made about more is better (regarding amp power), seems to have worked in my case. ]

More usually is better. To get a realistic-sounding drumbeat, the amp has to kick the speaker's cone just as hard as the drummer kicked the drumskin, and that takes a lot of power. It's easy to get a musical sound, but to get a fairly good approximation of the sound of a live performance is a real challenge, because of the power required to reproduce the dynamics of live music.

PWK's idea to get realistic dynamics was to make super-sensitive speakers that don't need much power to give you above-average dynamics, but more power helps as well, even if it's only used very briefly during musical transients.

If you want to bi-amp your La Scalas, it's easy to do, but it means going to new tweeters and horns that can cover the range of your present squawkers and tweeters so you can run them as 2-ways, plus you'll need a pair of matching power amps to give you four channels of amplification, and of course you'll need the active crossover. Most of those items can be found used, but it still adds up fast. In the meantime, you know what a better and more powerful amp does for your Scalas, so maybe just enjoy them as they are, or with some minor upgrades, until your budget is ready for that big step to bi-amping.

Are you using a sub with your Scalas now? They need the help of a sub for sure, while bi-amping is something you can do without very happily.

[oldenough]

Hi Pat, yes I think i will just enjoy the system as it is, the additional power has certainly moved it up to a different level, and this wasn't just something perceived, the difference is night and day especially as I listen at reasonably high volumes.Not using the sub at the moment with the La Scalas, as it is doing duty with my RF-5's..I have a Paradigm Servo 15 that I am very impressed with. Up till now I have been very happy with-out the need for a sub with them.

[gartenman]

its good to see all this freethinking and open dialogue taking place...i'm glad i posed the question on many levels...

its helped me to see the quality of members on this forum in areas of technical expertise and just as important if not more so the

generous sharing of their knowledge...its truly inspiring

[solst1ce]

I've read through the topic and I am impressed with the level of knowledge here. I have a question about biamping with my equipment. My current setup consists of a B&K ST-202 solid state amp (gold/black), a matching B&K Pro-5 preamp, and a Conrad Johnson MV75A1 tube amplifier. I want to biamp my Energy Veritas 2.4i floorstanding loudspeakers (link) with the ST-202 for the woofers and the MV75A1 on the mids/highs. The speakers have four terminals for biamping. My amplifiers undoubtedly (no way to check) have unmatched gains because of their characteristics: the ST-202 is 125 wpc solid and the MV75A1 is 75 wpc tube. To my limited knowledge, this necessitates the use of an active crossover and I assuming it would be just 2-way, even through there are 5 drivers on the speakers. I am looking for a crossover for my system with high end audio in mind as well as budget. The pro options are enticing budget wise but I want to keep my signal analogue and clean. I have seen that the Marchand crossovers (link) are highly regarded. Do you have any other recommendations for me about active crossovers? Thanks, Sam

[Islander]

People often figure that when bi-amping, they need a big amp for the bass, but only a little amp, like maybe their favourite sweet-sounding tube amp, for the treble. If they're tri-amping, that may be the case, but when bi-amping, the mid/hi driver is carrying a lot of the load, depending on the crossover frequency, as shown in this chart found in the site provided by djk on a previous page ( http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm ):

X-over Frequency (Hz)	Power to Bass (%)	Power to Mid+High (%)
250	40	60
350	50	50
500	60	40
1,200	65	35
3,000	85	15
5,000	90	10

With the Jubilee and JubScala crossing over a bit under 500Hz, you can see why it makes sense to use a pair of matching amps, one for bass and one for treble. To put it another way, when the crossover is at 500Hz or a bit below, the bass amp is powering the bottom 5 octaves of the audio range and the treble amp is powering the top 5 octaves. That means the load on both amps is comparable, so the treble amp should be roughly as powerful as the bass amp. Really bass-heavy music may change things a bit, but the chart should give good guidance in most cases.

Using matching amps also simplifies level matching between the bass drivers and the treble drivers, plus you're likely to get a better timbre match between the bass and treble drivers, since it removes one element of dissimilarity, even if the drivers are two different types, typically a cone woofer and a compression mid/tweeter.