Hooking up MA 500's

breal74

I have some questions as to the best way to hook up 4 Marantz MA 500s to a pair of RTi12s. Should I run one amp on the highs and mids and another one the lows, or should I bridge them? Also, if I bridge the amps, should I bi-wire? Thanks.

BWilberg266

As it doesn't sound like you are going to be using an active crossover and removing the passive crossover from the inside of your RTi12's most will say that there is very little point in running one amp to the low's and one to the high's and mids. Each amp is still going to be receiving the full bandwidth of audio so the benefit of bi-amping is negated. The real benefit of bi-amping is if the one amp is only receiving the lows from the source and the other is only receiving the mid's and high's from the source which is only achieved with some sort of an active crossover placed in front of the amps in the signal chain.

Regarding bi-wiring, this is really just doing the same exact thing that the jumper on the back of your speaker is doing already by distributing the power to both sets of posts, so unless you already have the cabling setup for bi-wiring, IMO save your money and don't worry about bi-wiring. Some will say there's a difference but as for me (and everything that the laws of physics have to say) there isn't a difference.

IMO I would go with the bridged method using one standard speaker cable to connect the speaker. You'll have the two amps working together as one beast and there will be less cabling running around your setup.

Enjoy the new amps! I haven't tried them but have heard many good things about them, I'm sure they'll do you proud!