Bi-amping RTi A7s

Graboid

Hello Polkies everywhere.

I recently welcomed a pair of Polk RTi A7s into my home theater system and was wondering if there might be any benefit to bi-amping them. I have the Yamaha RX-V863 AV receiver (100 Watts per channel) which has what they call a bi-amping option. Essentially it uses the front channels and adds the amplification from the back channels as well. Since I'm only using a 5:1 system and I'm not using the rear channels now, would there be any benefit at all to bi-amping in this situation?

Thanks for any advice you can offer,

Dan

george daniel

First,, have you tried replacing the jumpers with a good grade/guage wire?
It's cheap and worth a try.

Graboid

Cables are fine. I'm not having any problems, I was just wondering if bi-wiring would offer any benefits.

Dan

leroyjr1

Many people say yes and many say no. I say try it out and see how it sounds. If it were me I would look for a nice (cheap) 2 channel amp to wake those puppies up.

Enjoy!

John K.

Dan, doing that doesn't "add" amplification from the back channels, because the individual channels don't have any amplification capacity of their own. A receiver has just one main power supply section and it funnels that one power supply through the output transistors in the several channels. Those transistors act as valves in measuring out the power that the speakers connected to them require at that instant. Using a previously unused set of output transistors to help in measuring out the power to a speaker doesn't double the maximum power available, as some imagine, or increase it in any amount; the power supply section still is the limiting factor on the maximum power available to a speaker. So no, there's no benefit in that procedure, and it isn't actually "bi-amping", which requires two separate amplifiers with an external crossover(replacing the internal speaker crossover)preceding the amplifiers so that each gets only a limited frequency range to amplify.

Fongolio

With some receivers it is possible to adjust the frequency output of each channel. My Pioneer Elite has that option. In that case bi-amping using the surround channels may give some small gain. That being said I noticed very little (if any) difference when bi-amping my RtiA7's using the surround channels. No db boost at all. John K. is correct in that true bi-amping uses two separate amps to do the duty. My suggestion is play around a bit and if it sounds good to you then it is good no matter what anyone says. Welcome to the club and congrats on the purchase of some great speakers. I didn't know how good they were until I hooked up a separate two channel amp and a decent turntable. That's when those speakers really came alive.

Graboid

Thanks John K. I thought that was probably the case. I'm actually very happy with the setup as it is now. I just picked up the MOFI gold CD of Rush Permanent Waves and I've played it twice. It sounds amazing on the RTi A7s!!! I can't believe what a thrill it is to dig out a disc from my collection and hear it for the first time through the new Polks!!!

Dan