7.1 ONK Bi-AMP

RETXAB

OK.

If you Bi-AMP your Left and Right fronts, are you left with 5.1 surround from a 806 ONK?

How can you Bi-AMP your Left and Right fronts and keep 7 channels...add an amplifier or a crossover?

wutadumsn23

I may be wrong on this, but if I am someone will be able to correct me. If you Bi-Amp your front channels with your surround back L/R channels then yes you would be left a 5.1 in essence. However Bi-Amping with your receiver wouldn't be as effective as using an external amplifier to Bi-Amp said speakers, IMO. I have the 806 as well and have never tried to Bi-Amp, so I don't know that it would make that much of a difference. What type of speakers are you trying to Bi-Amp? I have Monitor 70's and think they sound just fine (so far) without Bi-Amping or using an external amp. Also true Bi-Amping involves much more than just running another set of speaker wires to your speakers, and I'm sure that one of the real experts would be happy to confuse (I mean explain) to you how to do it, lol. IMO I think you would be better off using an external amp, and not the 806 to Bi-Amp them. I would also be intrested to know if there was much of a difference if you do try it, since I haven't gotten around to trying it on mine yet. Hope this helps and welcome to Club Polk.

RETXAB

Well, the speakers I have for my fronts are no Bi-Ampable, but was interested in what advantage it provides compared to losing two channels in the rear...:(

jaysonbarnett

bi-amping means you have channels for the tweeters and the mids/woofers. Unless you have full range fronts i would just leave it as is. Yes if you bi-amp you are left with only 5.1. I have the 805 and tried bi-amping my rti8's and it did not improve the sound much, but i had to try it.

RETXAB

Since I have you two ONK fans, what is the pre amp out on the sub woofer do? Looks like one cable for the signal???

wutadumsn23

Do you mean the pre-out on your receiver or on the subwoofer itself? Is it an Onkyo sub?

aapocketz

Similar to the OP, I have a new Onkyo 606 and pair of monitor 60s. The onkyo supports "bi-amping" using the 7th and 8th channels (center L and center R?) to power the 2nd set of binding posts on the monitor 60 fronts. Like others, I hate to have a feature that I don't use, and want to take advantage of it.

My question is I thought bi-amping required disabling the passive crossover inside the speaker and having the low and high speakers powered by separate inputs from the receiver. The receiver would in effect act as an active crossover for the low/high speakers.

1. There is a metal bracket bridging the input pairs on the speaker. Does this need to be removed?
2. How do I disable the passive crossovers? Does removing the bracket do that? How does that work?
3. How do I configure what frequency ranges the Receiver outputs to the high and low pass networks?

I probably could use to RTFM a bit more, but if someone could point me in the right direction for this particular setup that would help.


@RETXAB the pre-amp for the sub isn't stereo so it only needs one (RCA) cable. Its the low freq effects channel (LFE). My polk psw-10 has inputs for stereo but the manual says to hook it up to a single input or split the cable with an RCA Y-adapter. You also need to disable the crossover (which in my case means turning it all the way to the highest freq, 120). ps. Nice threadjack.

mmadden28

On the Onk 805 if you use the rear channels to bi-amp, yes you lose the ability to use them for rears.
However if you keep it as 7.1 and use an external amp, you could split the L & R channel preamp outputs to their own channels on an external amp and bi-amp that way.
I think I read that you could use the AVR's amp'ed speaker level output to drive one half (such as the highs), and the preamp to an ext amp for the other half (lows), but its possible to run into gain mismatch issues.

aapocketz wrote: »

....


My question is I thought bi-amping required disabling the passive crossover inside the speaker and having the low and high speakers powered by separate inputs from the receiver. The receiver would in effect act as an active crossover for the low/high speakers.

1. There is a metal bracket bridging the input pairs on the speaker. Does this need to be removed?
2. How do I disable the passive crossovers? Does removing the bracket do that? How does that work?

....

If the speakers are bi-ampable, then removing the jumper between the binding posts does separate the high and low sides. No need to do any XO bypassing or anything. The speakers XO will take care of blocking or passing the appropriate signals.

If the speakers are not natively bi-ampable (only one set of binding posts) then don't biamp. Of course then if you really wanted to then I would imagin that you would have to do some fancy stuff to make it work. (beyond my scope)

mmadden28

RETXAB wrote: »

Since I have you two ONK fans, what is the pre amp out on the sub woofer do? Looks like one cable for the signal???

Most subwoofers these days are powered-or provide thier own amps. This is usally the LFE channel. Most subs again can also take a speaker level signal in, but the sub is not being driven by that signal, the sub's amp just takes the signal not the power and does its own amplification.

Typically you set your main speakers to "small" and the recieved/pre's crossover to a certain frequency (80Hz). this way only frequencies above 80Hz are sent to the main speakers, while all frequencies below 80Hz and those encoded in a movie soundtracks LFE channel will be sent via the Sub preout or LFE out tot he sub.

RETXAB

mmadden28 wrote: »

Typically you set your main speakers to "small" and the recieved/pre's crossover to a certain frequency (80Hz). this way only frequencies above 80Hz are sent to the main speakers, while all frequencies below 80Hz and those encoded in a movie soundtracks LFE channel will be sent via the Sub preout or LFE out tot he sub.

Interesting. I will be sure to mess with those settings once I decide on the speakers and shell out the cash. Sounds like Bi-Amping speakers is a waste of time, any one else agree?

Upstatemax

I don't agree... I have my Monitor 70's Bi-Amped from my Denon 2808CI and I am very happy. It helped a lot with music, MUCH better separation and lower frequency response. I guess if all you do is watch movies, then it's not such a huge deal, but if you listen to any music on them I found it helped a lot.

aapocketz

Thanks for the help mmadden28 and upstatemax.

The Monitor 70s are similar to the monitor 60s with the bi-amp capability. I feel that the fronts feel a bit weak driven with my onkyo tx-sr606, so maybe I will try bi-amping. On the monitor speakers I am guessing the top set of binding posts are for the tweeter and the lower for the woofer? It doesn't look like they are labeled.

I did finally RTFM, from page 17 of my receiver manual

The FRONT L/R and SURR BACK L/R terminal posts
can be used with front speakers and surround back
speakers respectively, or bi-amped to provide separate
tweeter and woofer feeds for front speakers, providing
improved bass and treble performance.
• When bi-amping is used, the AV receiver is able to
drive up to 5.1 speakers in the main room.
•For bi-amping, the FRONT L/R terminal posts con-
nect to the front speakers’ tweeter terminals. And the
SURR BACK L/R terminal posts connect to the front
speakers’ woofer terminals.
• Once you’ve completed the bi-amping connections
shown below and turned on the AV receiver, you must
set the Speaker Type setting to Bi-Amp to enable bi-
amping (see page 42).
Important:
• When making the bi-amping connections, be sure
to remove the jumper bars that link the speakers’
tweeter (high) and woofer (low) terminals.
• Bi-amping can only be used with speakers that support
bi-amping. Refer to your speaker manual.

aapocketz

@ RETXAB

From what I have gathered bi-wiring is probably not worth it, but bi-amping may help smooth power and get better freq separation.

The trade off is that you give up the other 2 channels (for 7.1 or for multi-room/zone 2 capabilities, at least on my receiver). Right now I don't really care about those features, so for the cost of some speaker wire I think its worth checking this out.

mmadden28

RETXAB wrote: »

Sounds like Bi-Amping speakers is a waste of time, any one else agree?

I have not tried bi-amping yet, either with external amps, my Onk 805 or a combination so I can 't say for sure myself if there is a difference.

Wether or not it's a waste of time is subjective. It depends on your system; source, speakers, room, cables, etc. Many factors can impact the affect of bi-amping as to wether or not it will be worth it. This is actually true of any change you make to your system.
Not everybody can discern differences, while others are especially acute to the changes. Some people may like the end result if a change is heard, some people may not.
Another major factor is how you're doing the bi-amping. Some will say that bi-amping with an AVR that uses the same internal power supply to provide the amplification power to each of the channels is not really bi-amping or at least not in the truest sense. I'd liken that to robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If you have the time and cable, try it. It can't hurt. :cool: