Bi-Amp?

[Jakeg123]

I know there has been a lot of discussion on the forums about bi-amping and if it makes a difference in the sound quality or not. My new receiver has the ability to bi-amp the front main speakers using the amps from the rear speakers and the main speakers. My receiver is 95 watts per channel, would there be any improvement in the sound if I bi-amp my RF-62s?

[Thaddeus Smith]

without bypassing the the internal crossover, you'll gain pretty much nothing through bi-amping (not to mention those tertiary channels are pretty wimpy). bi-wiring, however, has made a difference in my setup and may be worth a try. for others, it also does nothing. when testing this stuff, be sure to make the change and then get the least interested person in your house to come listen and give impressions ..those will be the most accurate and unbiased gauge for hearing if anything has improved/worsened.

[InVeNtOr]

for me it didn't do anything. i have a LPA-1 (from emotiva) and i first set up it up for bi-amping the front 3. i had it that way for a little while (half a year or so). one day i decided for giggles to see what it sounded like unbi-amped. to me i heard no difference. the only difference i found was when i retuned in my system with the spl meter, the front 3 speakers now had a very close db setting. when they were bi-amped the center channel was +6 than the mains. i don't really know why, but that's how it was.

my personal opinion, it's simply a waste of money. you have to run double the speaker wire, double the banana plugs (if you use those), and then trying to make all those extra wires neat is a headache! lol

maybe since your receiver is only 95w, it may help out. i would say if you have extra wire laying around try it, but don't do a "final install." i wish i would have just did a test before i actually routed the wires through my walls!

anyways, good luck!

[nezff]

i tried it and I wanted to hear a difference, but I really dont think I did.

[Youthman]

i tried it and I wanted to hear a difference, but I really dont think I did.

Same here. My Yamaha has a "Bi-amp" feature using the back surround channel but like stated, I heard absolutely no difference whatsoever. Just an extra pair of unnecessary speaker wire.

[Jakeg123]

Thank you for all of the information guys! It seems like it won't make a difference so I won't bother waisting the time. Maybe someday if I have a lot of extra time and I come across some extra speaker wire, I will give it a try. Until then, I will leave it the way it is.

One other question, I purchased my speaker wire a long time ago before I had very much knowledge on speakers. I purchased 16-gauge speaker wire. Would I notice a big difference if I purchased 12-gauge speaker wire and re-wired all of my speakers?

[Coytee]

For the sake of others that might read this thread and not follow the differences, could you guys clarify if indeed you are:

Biamping, defined as signal out of preamp into active crossover, into two amps, out of the amps and into each driver OR are you

"passively biamping" which I understand to be more like "biwiring" where you have two sets of wires going to your speakers HOWEVER, each pair of wires are actually carrying the full signal as contrasted with above, where each pair of wires is only carring only the LF signals or the HF signals.

If you are biwiring/passive biamping and didn't enjoy it while not differentiating it from active biamping, others who might be looking to actually 'actively' biamp, might pass on it because of the confusion presented here.

Note, I'm not saying you are biwring, just noticing the potential for the confusion.

My wife calls me retentive [:^)]

[Thaddeus Smith]

For the sake of others that might read this thread and not follow the differences, could you guys clarify if indeed you are:

Biamping, defined as signal out of preamp into active crossover, into two amps, out of the amps and into each driver OR are you

"passively biamping" which I understand to be more like "biwiring" where you have two sets of wires going to your speakers HOWEVER, each pair of wires are actually carrying the full signal as contrasted with above, where each pair of wires is only carring only the LF signals or the HF signals.

If you are biwiring/passive biamping and didn't enjoy it while not differentiating it from active biamping, others who might be looking to actually 'actively' biamp, might pass on it because of the confusion presented here.

Note, I'm not saying you are biwring, just noticing the potential for the confusion.

My wife calls me retentive

the problem, coyotee is that many AVR's now support "bi-amping" through the use of speaker C terminals ..basically the hookups for multi-room speakers. the manufacturer calls it bi-amping, but it is nowhere near what you describe.

i personally bi-wire using two different gauges of wire to the LF and HF, joined into a single connection at the amp.

[Steve_L]

I have a similar set up, on my Pioneer the receiver has the ability to use the back surround channel if not being used. My Klipsch F-3s have two sets of inputs and I "assume" but am not positive how it does the bandwidth splitting inside the speakers.

I sometimes "think" I hear a bit more "clarity" at very high volume levels, but it could just be my imagination. For all practicle purposes I don't hear any difference. I did it becuase "it was there".[]

[Jakeg123]

For the sake of others that might read this thread and not follow the differences, could you guys clarify if indeed you are:

Biamping, defined as signal out of preamp into active crossover, into two amps, out of the amps and into each driver OR are you

"passively biamping" which I understand to be more like "biwiring" where you have two sets of wires going to your speakers HOWEVER, each pair of wires are actually carrying the full signal as contrasted with above, where each pair of wires is only carring only the LF signals or the HF signals.

If you are biwiring/passive biamping and didn't enjoy it while not differentiating it from active biamping, others who might be looking to actually 'actively' biamp, might pass on it because of the confusion presented here.

Note, I'm not saying you are biwring, just noticing the potential for the confusion.

My wife calls me retentive

the problem, coyotee is that many AVR's now support "bi-amping" through the use of speaker C terminals ..basically the hookups for multi-room speakers. the manufacturer calls it bi-amping, but it is nowhere near what you describe.

i personally bi-wire using two different gauges of wire to the LF and HF, joined into a single connection at the amp.

Does bi-wiring improve the sound quality?

[Thaddeus Smith]

well ..it changes it, not necessary improve it. i like to tinker ..so i tinkered a bunch with wire in my system and found bi-wiring to be a good fit.

[Steve_L]

Here's what I pulled from my Pioneer AVR VSX-1015 users manual. Based on this, the same full frequency spectrum signal is fed to both sets of speaker terminals, and therefore the speakers still do the cross-over, but there are two sets of amps doing the driving. So from that point of view it's more of a bi-wiring scenario.

Bi-amping your front speakers

Bi-amping is when you connect the high frequency driver and low frequency driver of your speakers to different amplifiers (in this case, to both front and surround back terminals) for better crossover performance. Your speakers must be bi-ampable to do this (having separate terminals for high and low) and the sound improvement will depend on the kind of speakers you’re using.

1 Connect your speakers as shown below.

This illustration below shows the connections for biamping your front left speaker. Hook up your front right speaker in the same way. Since both front and surround back speaker terminals output the same audio, it doesn’t matter which set (front or surround back) is powering which part (High or Low) of the speaker. • Make sure that the + / – connections are properly inserted.

2 Select the ‘Front Bi-Amp’ setting from the ‘Surr Back

System’ menu.

See Surround back speaker setting on page 33 to specify how you’re using the surround back speaker terminals.

Caution

• Most speakers with both High and Low terminals have two metal plates that connect the High to the Low terminals. These must be removed when you are bi-amping the speakers or you could severely damage the amplifier. See your speaker manual for more information.