Is Bi-Amping Snake-oil?

HermanMunster

HermanMunster

HermanMunster

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So my eye has been turned towards a new shiny, shiny poweramp (Arcam p35) to match my existing A32. My logical side thinks that this “may” provide a very small improvement, which my 50 year old ears would be unable to hear. Has anyone done anything similar to this?



Thanks
 
It's noticeable on pretty high end gear I'm biamping my hifi. I don't think you'd notice on low end gear

It's only a slight difference though, I already had the amplifiers unused so not as if I had to go out and buy more. Active biamping is superior but you'd need to remove crossovers from the speakers, but line level crossovers between your pre and power stages
 
The power amp will add more control over the bass and you're likely to hear its benefits in the midrange too. Of course though, a lot depends on your current setup and the room.

The A35 is a very good integrated amp for neutrality and sound stage. If the imaging is a bit off, or you can't follow individual instruments clearly, then you'd be better served getting the room acoustics sorted and speaker placement optimised first so that you're getting the most from the existing gear. If all that's done though then IMO the P35 is a no brainer. The power rating is very conservative. You might also want to try the A32 as a pre only.
 
The original purpose of bi-wring is so you can run different cables to the tweeter section and mid / lows. It was intended as a form of tuning the sound. For example if you wanted a slightly more 'bright' sound, you could run silver plated speaker cable to the tweeter binding posts and continue to use copper cable to the mid/lows.

Never tried it myself, but the theory appears ok.
 
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JasonM said:
The original purpose of bi-wring is so you can run different cables to the tweeter section and mid / lows. It was intended as a form of tuning the sound. For example if you wanted a slightly more 'bright' sound, you could run silver plated speaker cable to the tweeter binding posts and continue to use copper cable to the mid/lows.

Never tried it myself, but the theory appears ok.
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You're talking about bi-wiring. @HermanMunster is talking about bi-amping. Aside from two sets of cables to each speaker and taking the HF/LF links out it's a different thing.
 
lucid said:
You're talking about bi-wiring. @HermanMunster is talking about bi-amping. Aside from two sets of cables to each speaker and taking the HF/LF links out it's a different thing.
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People were talking about bi-wiring so I responded to that.

Re bi-amping, most good active monitors use bi-amping with electronic cross overs, my active monitors are bi-amped.

Here is a small related story on bi-amping...

Many many years ago I involved in setting up professional Karaoke equipment. For Karaoke they use voice speakers, so the focus was on clarity for vocals. I would run another setup of full range speakers with another amp (so dual amps, twin 400w McGregor Amps with cooling fans), and would send the lower frequencies to the full range speakers, and higher frequencies to the voice speakers. Similar to a sub woofer, but I was cutting off the lower frequencies at a higher frequency to modern sub. The benefit was you had a very clear separation of sounds. I remember testing Chris Rea Road To Hell on it, I would have a very clear vocal in the room, then the lower lower sounds such as drums and bass guitar would be present but very separated. To give an idea of how good it sounded, I once setup where a professional singer was also performing, and he said that's a £10k sound you have there, and this was in 1997.
 
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JasonM said:
People were talking about bi-wiring so I responded to that.

Re bi-amping, most good active monitors use bi-amping with electronic cross overs, so there must be some benefit to it.
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I think most folk who understand how speakers work would say that creating power only then to dump a load of it in the process of passive frequency filtering for the drivers is very inefficient. Doing the frequency filtering at the preamp stage is the best solution.

Linn was doing this with their Isobarik speakers back in the '80s. Tweeters require very little power compared to mids and woofers, and so filtering at the pre stage allows the amp's to be tailored in output power to match the drivers.

It's not just active monitors that do this today. Larger smart speakers and most sound bars use the same method too. It helps of course that Class D amps are small, cheap, powerful and relatively cool running. Being able to fit 200 Watts worth of multiple Class D amps into the same volume of space as just a small conventional EL transformer has been a major change in electronics design.
 
lucid said:
I think most folk who understand how speakers work would say that creating power only then to dump a load of it in the process of passive frequency filtering for the drivers is very inefficient. Doing the frequency filtering at the preamp stage is the best solution.

Linn was doing this with their Isobarik speakers back in the '80s. Tweeters require very little power compared to mids and woofers, and so filtering at the pre stage allows the amp's to be tailored in output power to match the drivers.

It's not just active monitors that do this today. Larger smart speakers and most sound bars use the same method too. It helps of course that Class D amps are small, cheap, powerful and relatively cool running. Being able to fit 200 Watts worth of multiple Class D amps into the same volume of space as just a small conventional EL transformer has been a major change in electronics design.
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I agree with all of this, and bi-amping with electronic crossovers is the way forward. Another advantage is you have mono-block approach, so it's not just your separating the highs and lows, there is separation of the audio channels.

Going back when I did Karaoke all those years ago. I notice now that modern DJ's use active speakers, that are bi-amped, so they don't even have to carry/move sperate amplifiers like I use to do.
 
JasonM said:
I agree with all of this, and bi-amping with electronic crossovers is the way forward. Another advantage is you have mono-block approach, so it's not just your separating the highs and lows, there is separation of the audio channels.

Going back when I did Karaoke all those years ago. I notice now that modern DJ's use active speakers, that are bi-amped, so they don't even have to carry/move sperate amplifiers like I use to do.
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Modern DJs - that's just the development in technology making more convenient solutions available.

The original question in the thread was whether bi-amping is snake oil. IMO it isn't. Few would question an upgrade to a single more powerful amp, say going from 100W to 200W. The additional power provides extra headroom and so better control of the drivers. Bi-amping in the way that @HermanMunster is considering is the next step up from that. It adds power, and in this case, it goes exactly from the 100W/ch of the A32 alone to 2 x 100W for the A32 +P35 combo. Double the power, or 40 amps of current on tap if you want to see it a different way. That's a heck of a lot. I'd be surprised if anyone knowledgeable considered that snake oil.

Clearly though there's a practical problem. It's one of how to add two amps together in a way that won't end up with one amp receiving voltage from the other. This is why removing the bridging links at the speaker end is essential. It separates the two halves of the crossover and allows isolation between the amps. The passive components in the crossover are still in place for the HF and LF drive feeds. A tweeter requires hardly any power compared to the mid/bass drivers, so the power of one amp is somewhat wasted, but there's still 200W on tap where there was 100W before.

Bi-wiring is, IMO, largely snake oil though. Aside from the reduction in resistance in adding some extra copper - rarely if ever a bad thing - the rest of the so-called benefits of doubling the cabling from a single amp seems rather sketchy to me. That's not to say that it doesn't make the sound different, but different doesn't automatically equate to better.
 
lucid said:
Bi-wiring is, IMO, largely snake oil though. Aside from the reduction in resistance in adding some extra copper - rarely if ever a bad thing - the rest of the so-called benefits of doubling the cabling from a single amp seems rather sketchy to me. That's not to say that it doesn't make the sound different, but different doesn't automatically equate to better.
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Totally agree with the above. BTW this is how I connect my speaker cables, by stripping them in 2 places, and feeding the single cable into each side of the posts.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/s...xG6vtxrkwtGQnRqE1j_w=w1261-h946-no?authuser=0
 
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Minstadave said:
Why go to the effort to wire to both speaker posts?
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It makes a superior connection as your connecting the cable in 2 places and not just 1.

There should also be less resistance going to the tweeter posts as compared to using the factory jumpers only, however if it would be noticeable I can't say.
 
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Minstadave said:
But you have a solid bit of copper attaching the 2 posts already.
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Yes, but I still have a double connection from the speaker wire, so it should be better. Again if anyone would hear differences in practice impossible to say.

According to Paul Mcgowan from PS audio, stripped cables directly on the binding posts make the best connection. Banana plugs and other connection types are better for convenance of unplugging / connecting only.
 
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Short answer - biamping isn't hogwash. It's returns depends on the components. Amps are built to a price point, so are speakers.

The basic biamping simply adds more power capacity in the amplification. On a typical interior crossover speaker, that still remains. So adding another amp then provides more current handling and as such often the amp then doesn't work as hard so introduces less distortion.

More advanced biamping removes the crossover and adds a DSP before the amp to digitally separate the frequencies to each amp. This is what active speakers do too. The more advanced DSPs are pre-programmed with the frequency response of the speaker for that speaker driver and the room sitting position.

Just make sure your second amp has the same length cable (thus same characteristic present to the amp, speaker and there's no phase difference caused by delay for the signal through a longer cable).

There are other ways to use multiple amps - bridging with differential signals is an example. My design for a headphone amp uses two amps on each speaker driver. The speaker isn't connected to ground but the two amps are connected to each side of the speaker (one to + and one to -) and sit in balanced opposition. This cancels noise better, adds power handling, but is more complex. In my case it requires 9 power supplies!
 
JasonM said:
Yes, but I still have a double connection from the speaker wire, so it should be better. Again if anyone would hear differences in practice impossible to say.

According to Paul Mcgowan from PS audio, stripped cables directly on the binding posts make the best connection. Banana plugs and other connection types are better for convenance of unplugging / connecting only.
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If I remember when I get my new speakers with twin posts I'll test the two methods and find out if it makes any difference.
 
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