Bi-amping

drumiv

What is the best way to bi-amp? It seems to me there are 3 ways I can go; I'm using (or will be when #2 arrives) Parasound 22000II's. These are made for bi-wiring in that they have 2 sets of speaker outputs. Not A/B. So, should I use 1 amp to power the left, 1 to power the right speaker, using jumpers. Do the above, but utilize both outputs(bi-wire), or use 1 amp for LF, 1 for HF? Thoughts?

tonyb

One amp for each so your using them in a mono block fashion.

drumiv

Thanks, tonyb. So straight-up, no bi-wire, use the jumpers? Will this effect the "SDA Effect" on my SRS's?

Dawgfish

^^If using on SDAs you have to configure it differently since they require common grounding in the amps^^. What Tony is referring to is vertical passive bi-amping and is the way to go with most speakers, i.e one amp per speaker. With SDAs however (unless you have a dreadnaught or AIC and provided your SDA's are compatible with those) you have to configure the two amps in a horizontal passive bi-amping setup. That is use one amp to power the lows on both speakers and the other amp to power the highs. Of course you'll have to remove the jumpers and run speaker wires from each post on the amp to each post on the speakers (2 sets of straight-up speaker wire). I've experimented with this several times with my SRS 2s with great effect. The important thing is to make sure you run the same type and length of ICS and speaker cables to both amps and the two amps have the same amount of gain (which you will have running identical amps like you are doing). One of the best results I had bi-amping my SDAs was running a tube amp to the mids and highs and running a solid state amp to the lows. The solid state amp had adjustable gain knobs so I could match it to the tube amp. You got the best of both worlds with that set-up.

tonyb

Dawg is spot on, I didn't realize you had SDA's....my bad.

drumiv

Thanks, gents. Hi/ lo it is. Tubes will have to wait; this SS gear is expensive allready.