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Vertical Biamping


Deang

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I was out at the Cary Site earlier reading Dennis Hadd's link at the bottom of the home page regarding vertical biamping with two of his Rocket 88's.

Pretty soon here I will have two Super Amps, and I figured while I have them both, I mind as well biamp and see how it sounds.

What I don't understand, and what he doesn't explain, is WHY go vertical biamping, when horizontal biamping achieves basically the same thing without having to resort to goofy "Y" interconnects in order to combine the inputs of the amps.

Anyone have any insight into this?

I am curious about the impedance characteristics of the individual drivers when you biamp. If I put one amp on the tweeters, and another on the woofers -- are both of my amps still seeing a nominal 8 ohm impedance, or something all together different?

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Deanf>s>

AE-25 Super Amp DJH * S F Line 1 * S9000ES * HSU x-over * SVS CS+ * Klipsch RF7s f>s>

Metal drivers make metal music shinef>c>s>

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Writing all that out would lead to carpal tunnel! For sake of ease, here is a pretty good post on the Asylum delivered a few years back on the subject. A few things amiss in there but some good info within.

BIAMPING

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/general/messages/57210.html

See the text below by your hero, ole Dennis. It seems that the Rocket 88 is even better suited for biamping in the verticle fashion based on the build of this amp and the sep channel configurations.

"The same occurrence takes place with the midrange tweeter crossover system. As low frequencies enter a tweeter midrange crossover network, the amplifier looks into a very high impedance that will not pull down the amplifier. In simplistic terms, the amplifier channel that is feeding the midrange tweeter network will only be delivering any appreciable current when the frequencies are in the mid to high frequency range.To take this wonderful concept a bit further one need only look to the advantages of a Cary Audio Design Rocket 88 or V12 amplifiers. These two stereo amplifiers come equipped as standard with two very important features for bi-amping. The first is the independent 'switchable on the fly' impedance matching selector for each channel.

The other very important feature is the ability to switch independent channels to either triode or ultra-linear operation mode. Given the facts as presented, most loudspeakers may tend to go low in impedance in the bass and at the same time need less energy and power in the upper registers. This offers the user the ability to customize their system."

With the combination of the Asylum post and the text above by Dennis, you see what he is aiming at here. On the other hand, I am not sure how much advantage you will gain when doing this in a totally triode wired Super Amp, especially when they will be DIFFERENT SUPER AMPS, thus not being very good for biamping in the verticle mode as you need the SAME amp. This is an important point here; the DJH version of the Super Amp is a whole different animal.

kh

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This message has been edited by mobile homeless on 06-27-2002 at 03:29 AM

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I knew I wasn't going to vertical biamp because of the differences of the two amps.

I was going to horizontal biamp -- putting one on the tweeters and the other on the woofers.

My question was really just asking what advantage vertical biamping had over horizontal biamping.

Thanks for the link Mobile -- I'll dig in later this morning.

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Deanf>s>

AE-25 Super Amp DJH * S F Line 1 * S9000ES * HSU x-over * SVS CS+ * Klipsch RF7s f>s>

Metal drivers make metal music shinef>c>s>

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Using stereo amps, vertical biamping offers the advantage (theoretically, anyway) of superior channel separation, but both amps must be identical. Horizontal biamping using stereo amps reduces channel separation (to whatever the residual value of the amp itself might be), but allows you to use different amps for bass and treble (provided you have some way to compensate for different gain, if that's a problem.)

For example, see this image:

biwire.gif

On the left side, we are vertically biamping. As the amps are physically separate, our channel separation will be whatever value we get from the preamp. Also, if one channel is significantly louder in one passage than the other, there will be no power supply intermodulation between channels.

On the right side we are horizontally biamping. We can use a tube amp for the tweeters and a sand amp for the bass. Also, loud bass impact will not intermodulate with the treble.

Ray

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Music is art

Audio is engineering

Ray's Music System

This message has been edited by Ray Garrison on 06-27-2002 at 03:11 PM

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In biamping (Horizontal or vertical) which amp drives the midrange?

I suppose this isnt the time to bring up tri-amping??

Once amp for each driver seems like a pretty cool idea to me.

Of course with the Heritage range you can only use one amp unless you are using an external crossover - or did I get that wrong too?

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My System: http://aca.gr/pop_maxg.htm

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You can only use as many amp channels as the speaker's crossovers are designed to accept, unless you want to modify them yourself. Lots of speakers accomodate biamping, but very, very few that I know of allow for three or more channels. ML Statements, the now-discontinued Waveforms, couple of other cost no object designs.

In every case I'm aware of, one set of inputs drives the woofers, and the other drives the tweeter / midrange. In a four or more way design (lower woofer, midwoofer, midrange, treble ) the lower woofer is driven by one input, the other drivers are driven by the other input.

The new Heritage line allows for biamping. They have (HURRAY!!!) gotten rid of the stupid terminal barrier strip connections and gone with regular multi-way binding posts.

------------------

Music is art

Audio is engineering

Ray's Music System

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