Monitor 70 bi-wiring

Carverampman

I have a Yamaha receiver and a set of Polk Audio Monitor 70s. In the owners manual it vaguely mentions bi-wiring. Does anyone know if it is worth the trouble and if so how to do it? Do I use the "b" outputs, the surround back, or the presence outputs?

Eric W

If you have good wiring to begin with and your cable run isn't too long, you probably notice little, if any difference. You're essentially running more copper between the receiver and the speakers.

However, if you use the "surround back" and can reconfigure them to a "biamp" mode, that is worth exploring.

Carverampman

Thanks for the reply. I have 10 gage wire running to the monitor 70s with monster cable banana plugs on a 3' run. So I should be good there. I am using the "surround back", but I dont understand what you mean by reconfiguring them to "bi-amp". Would that involve the monitor 70s?

rdb2001

Carverampman wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. I have 10 gage wire running to the monitor 70s with monster cable banana plugs on a 3' run. So I should be good there. I am using the "surround back", but I dont understand what you mean by reconfiguring them to "bi-amp". Would that involve the monitor 70s?

In receivers with the Bi-amping feature, In order to send it the front speaker signal when using the back speakers connections you have to go in the settings menu and set your receiver to BI-AMP mode. It was really easy for my onkyo 606 but for the yamaha I am not sure where it would be located in the settings.

tcrossma

To bi-wire or bi-amp, make sure you first remove the jumper between the top and bottom speaker terminals.

If you want to bi-wire, you would run one set of speaker wires from the main speaker output on the receiver to the bottom posts of the speakers. Then run another set of speaker wires from the "B" output on the receiver (or if it doesn't have a "B" then connect both set of wires so the main outputs). This second run would go to the top posts of the speakers. You may or may not notice any improvement -- I did not when I had my monitor 60's.

To sort of bi-amp, you would do the same except use the surround-back outputs of the receiver instead of the "B" outputs. This assumes that the receiver can be configured to duplicate the main output to the surround back channels. Again, you may or may not notice a difference. Bi-amping from a receiver like that doesn't usually help all that much since there's a finite amount of power that's now simply split 4 ways instead of 2. But it's certainly worth a try.

Carverampman

I will get out the book on the Yamaha and see if it is capable of "bi-amp". The system sounds great and the monitor 70s sing like a bird. The amps I use ror the subs are old but they rock hard.

Carverampman

See if anyone can help out with this. The Yamaha is a 7 channel receiver and I use a set of Sony bookshelf speakers for the presence channel. They are mounted on the wall behind the Polk Monitor 70s. Would it be worth while to run the wires from the presence channels to the bottom of the monitor 70s and do away with the Sonys. I always play my system in 7 channel digital stereo.

Dawgfish

I have a set of Monitor 70's that I'm using as my front speakers along with a Yamaha V-661 reciever in my bedroom system. Bi-amping them made a big difference to me with the Monitor 70s performance. The speakers gained greater imaging, the soundstage widened, and the bass and treble response both became much clearer. The bass response became much punchier also. For my V-661 I biamped using the front speaker output to the bass (bottom post) of the Monitor 70's and the rear sorrounds of the V-661 for the tweeter (top post). Make sure you switch the reciever to Biamp mode. Without the manual here in front of me I can't remember the specific steps how that was done, but you should be able to find that in your manual. Also remember to remove the speaker terminal post bridges as the others have mentioned. Give it a try. I'll be interested to see if you came up with the same results I did. I hope so, I sure do like the results with mine. BTW, I'm running 14 guage THX certified speaker wire. Hope this helps.

solara

Sorry to hijack, but I have a similar question, but with regards to my Polk Csi5 center speaker, using my Onkyo SR606.

If I don't want to biamp or biwire, which set of terminals would I use, the top or bottom set, and does it matter if I turn the speaker upside down to direct it upward if it's below the TV?

Someone mentioned for the Monitors to remove the jumper between the top and bottom speaker terminals. On the CSi5, I don't see any jumpers or anything else between the top and bottom speaker terminals. So if I wanted to biwire or biamp the Csi5, how would I do that?

The manual that came with the speaker is extremely vague!

Dawgfish

Solara,

As long as the speaker jumper plates are in place, it doesn't matter which set of posts you connect your center channel speaker wire to when not biwiring or biamping. The jumper plate should be there. Completely remove the speaker terminal post knobs and you should see a gold plate beneath it. This is the jumber plate. If you're not biwiring or biamping leave it in place and attach your speaker wire to either the upper or lower posts. It doesn't matter which set in this situation. This is also true when turning the center upside down to angle the speaker upward (I do this also). If you still don't see a jumper in place, run a short piece of speaker wire from negative post to negative post, and from positive post to positive post to act as a jumber. If this is the case and you don't currently have the jumper plates in place, your center is going to sound a lot better!

With Polk speakers with dual speaker posts, the upper terminal is for the tweeters and the lower terminals are for the woofers when the speaker is placed rightside up. I've heard of some folks on the board that like to biwire or biamp using an amp that is known to produce better bass response driving the woofers, and another amp to drive the tweets. In this case, the amp that produces better bass response (or it may be the case where a more powerful amp is used on the woofers also) will be attached to the bottom (woofer) speaker posts and the other amp will be attached to the upper posts (tweets). Again, this is with the speaker in the rightside up configuration. If you turn the center channel upside down this will reverse. Just remember that in your application though, it won't matter which set of posts you attach it to just as long as the jumpers are in place. Hope this helps!

solara

Ok thanks a lot for your help.