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Bi Amping Cornwalls


Keith Csolak

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I need some advice. I purchased a used Cornwalls just prior to the holidays . I have been bringing them back - cleaning cab, grill cover and replaced the 15's with the help of Mr. Crites. I would like to find out what is the best way to bi amp them. I would like to use a tube amp for the mid and upper horns and a transistor amp for the 15's. I am currently using Krell equip. A Krell KSA 250 for amp and Krell Showcase Pre amp. I do love to play them loudly at times . However I have heard them with tube amps and the sound is just magical. I would love to have both worlds. So I thought bi amping would be the way to go. My questions are 1. Is it easy to do 2. Do I need to not use the crossover in the Cornwalls ( like un hooking bass drivers to original crossover? ) 3. What is a decent crossover - brand /price? 4. Where should i go to find this kind of equip.? In Tube amps what kind of wattage would I need to work with the Krell KSA 250? I would like to be able to play them loudly when needed. I am also lookinf for the Brass logo plates for the grills - Klipsch does not make anymore . The other train of thought is to buy a pricy high wattage tube amp - what do you guys think - Help - I do love these Cornwalls -

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have not scrolled this far down til now. I will say you have a great start with the krell and cornwalls(imo they are fine right there). Im sure you have enjoyed this setup for a while now. I have freinds bi amping cornwalls atm, single tube and solid state power to others as well as straight from an avr and all the above are happy happy. I dont get online often although i will respond...have you made another step? If biamping a nice 25x2 tube dynaco on horns and krell on the 15's would be as sweet as honey gets no doubt. Have you made any new steps lately? im sure crites helped...ti diaphrams did you get from him? however you got them at the moment they will shine fine forever

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  • 7 months later...

do you Corns have two sets of speaker cable binding posts on the rear of the cabinet? Do they have a jumper plate in between them? Do you have a tube or solid-state amp with a volume control so you can match the output? Do you have frequency response tracks and a SPL meter?

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Krell and Klipsch. The stuff nightmares are made of.....

Seriously though, all you need is a good tube amp. Take the money you would use in buying an active xover and tube amp, sell the Krell and buy one really good low power tube amp. You will be amazed at how much better they will sound.

Shakey

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My questions are

1. Is it easy to do

2. Do I need to not use the crossover in the Cornwalls ( like un hooking bass drivers to original crossover? )

3. What is a decent crossover - brand /price?

4. Where should i go to find this kind of equip.?

In Tube amps what kind of wattage would I need to work with the Krell KSA 250?

1. Yes, it's fairly easy to do - it takes only about 5 minutes per speaker to disconnect the woofers from the crossovers. Routing the woofer leads outside the CW cabinets might take a little more time/effort to make it look nice.

2. To bi-amp, you do need to disconnect the woofer from the speaker's internal crossover network and directly connect those woofer leads to your high power amplifier. You will then set the crossover point on your active crossover to match the Cornwall passive network crossover point.

3. See http://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/117543-active-bi-ampingtri-amping-faq/ for a short discussion of crossover brands. I personally recommend most crossovers except perhaps the Behringer DCX2496 and perhaps the miniDSP.

4. You can find these active crossovers online: many sites carry digital active crossovers at the lowest prices. Also check for used crossovers on ebay and craigslist (nationwide). I bought all of my digital active crossovers on these two sites.

Virtually any amplifier can be used to drive your midrange/tweeter sections with your existing amp driving your woofers.

Chris

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Peter,

No, I haven't, but I've heard that others had issues other than sound quality, in other words, they were a bit more to handle than a typical out-of-the-box pro active digital crossover, so I recommend to beginners to perhaps avoid them in favor of used pro units that cost not much more.

Chris

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Ok. I have one so can deal with its setup. I was just wondering. I have no immediate plans to go active (although at one point I thought an interesting way to go about it would be to do digital crossover filtering at full gain to maximize S/N (before rather than after a preamp), and then attenuate with a volume control common to all three (if 3-way) stream by using the 6-channel input of an AVR).

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