Quote:
Originally Posted by Masterlu
Serge... how many speakers have you bi-amped? How many have you tri-amped?
|
Ivan, none. For the simple reason I mentioned above. The power the speaker absorbs is never shared equally between the drivers. The woofers absorb a lions share of power and the mids and tweeters would go up in smoke way before one could get anywhere near the full capability of any amp.
When I had speakers that offered the possibility of doing it, they were not large enough for me to even consider it since my amps were way above the speaker’s wattage rating.
When I had large enough speakers (Wilson) in a room that could have supported that level of playback, the speakers were not bi-ampable.
What I did however experiment with and had great success is using a Bryson external crossover to split the lower octaves away from the speaker and using dual subs.
The crossover was between the preamp and amps so no power was used from the amps for the lower octaves, the amps never saw any signal below 70Hz, hence much more power reserve. The JL Subs were put to the task of using their own power up to 70Hz. A true efficiency and sharing the workload.
That also completely liberated the speaker from having to reproduce octaves it struggled with. I was using Sonus Faber Guarneri Mementos at the time which drastically improved the coherence of the speakers and improved the midrange since they were 2 driver speakers.
That was the best overall result.
Bi or Tri-amping will not hurt anything. In some cases as I mentioned in the other post, it may help somewhat but it doesn’t work as a simple math of adding all the power together anymore than putting a 1000 HP engine in a Honda Accord and expecting to use all of it without breaking some parts. Technically one has 1000 HP but realistically only 350 HP can be used.
I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from doing it, simply pointing out some facts to be better informed since we brought it up.