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Bi-amping Klipschorns


CushXR

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Hi all. I'm thinking of bi-amping my modern Khorns with my Yamaha RX-A3000.

Has anybody done this? Any known pitfalls?

My hope is that YPAO can improve the phase control of the bass bins and hi/mid horn set for improved imaging. Possibly some other tonal improvements from the active crossover like EQ functionality of the receiver?

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Well, I tried bi amping my KHorns since my rx-a3000 receiver has the capability to support this in a 5.1 system. In this case, the rear surround amplifiers are repurposed to run the mid/tweeter section of the front speakers. The speaker crossover connections are designed to support this too.

I had to obviously make some menu selection setup changes and also re-ran the YPAO room correction software. It immediately decided that one of the bass bins was wired backwards. I reversed the polarity and the error went away. It's odd that the problem was not picked originally but perhaps it's a misbuild inside that bass bin and was covered up by a correctly wired mid/tweeter section. Also, YPAO decided that the fronts were now "small" speakers (laughable). Not surprisingly it didn't sound right, like no bass was being sent to the fronts. Then I manually set the speaker size to large and the sound improved dramatically. Ultimately they sound much warmer now then ever but it's hard to say whether the biamping is really the direct cause for this.

Biamping could allow YPAO to phase correct the bass bins separately from the mid/tweeter section. But again it's unclear whether YPAO is actually taking advantage of that opportunity. It's a peculiar situation to have the tweeter distance be substantially different from the woofer after all. Imaging seems similar in 2 channel stereo vs Pure Direct and so does tone/timber so I guess no real help from YPAO.

Overall though, a clear improvement in tone/timber vs previous setup (for whatever reason) so I think I'll stick with the biamp setup. But with that said, perhaps the biggest improvement I have made recently was by simply canting the speakers out directly towards my seating position. Obviously a no-no for Khorns but I didn't actually noticed a change in bass response. What I did notice was a big improvement in imaging which was my biggest source of dissatisfaction from the beginning with this setup.

Now I have to decide if I should move into pre/pro eqpt with better room/speaker correction capability...

Edited by CushXR
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"With the bass bin polarity now reversed, how is the imaging without bi-amping? I expect that would make a big difference, no?"

Ha, good question. I haven't yet found the time to undo the biamping for reevaluation with the new bass bin polarity. However, the only bi amping improvement that I noticed was actually in tone/timbre, not in imaging. But those improvements might now magically appear without bi amping, assuming that the polarity error could have been affecting bass delivery.

Right now I'm actually considering pursuit of active crossover opportunities that are possible with biamped architecture. Oddly, I'm still noticing substantial improvements to imaging and tone/timbre in Pure Direct vs regular stereo mode, at least with some material. That's confusing to me and makes me wonder if my receiver has some inherent flaws in the processing.

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