maxed out 170's?

[hearing specialist]

I really think having a set of sand filled 340's for your fronts and using the 170's for side surrounds vs. back surrounds would allow you to bi-amp your 340's with your awesome receiver to give you more "level" setup control within the receiver itself to max the adjustability to gain the sound your after. Might as well use the extra channels and gain tweakable control with the tweeter and drivers. Your listening distance is close to mine at 13ft so you need those 340's

I also have a stereo sub setup and would never go back to a single setup. Controlling and smoothing the response is crazy positive and reinforces everything needed for that awesome HT experience. Man, you can get into all kinds of adjustable options doing this.


Brian in Bakersfield...

[scape]

if i bi-amp them on my denon, would i use zone 2 outs and just reconfigure them as left and right? i never thought about boosting the signal, but that makes a lot of sense-- i wonder if i would get twice the headroom for peaks.

my sub is 'alright', nothing to write home about, but certainly cleaner sounding than most basic boxes; i always wanted 2 subs, but thought having two of my sub would be rather worthless in terms of benefits. maybe i'll give it a go too. what's your favorite placement for them? i was thinking either stereo style placement, or opposing walls (like one near the seating, one near the tv)

[hearing specialist]

On receivers like yours and mine we would use the "surround back" typically for the bi-amping. Your main Left and Rights would go to the top terminal connections on the 340's then the surround backs to the bottom ones. You may need to go thru your speaker setting and switch "bi-amp" on or let Audyssey figure it out when it calibrates. It will gain you independant "level" control for the tweets and mids and I think that can be important in our quest for sound quality.

Sub placement can be as simple as them on each side of the towers or as THX suggests one sub in the center of your front wall and one directly opposing in the center of the back wall. Mine are setup next to each tower on the outsides. What a huge difference in smoothing and with less gain needed it will improve headroom but its the smoothing and quality of bass that you will notice more, its really positive. I'd personally love to have 2 F12's instead on 1 expensive F15. Even my Dayton 10 inch DVC subs benefit from quality improvement in every dimension running stereo subs. Maybe in the interim run your single sub directly in the center of your main wall to minimize any side wall boost/boomy to increase sound quality, just a thought.

[GirgleMirt]

I really think having a set of sand filled 340's for your fronts and using the 170's for side surrounds vs. back surrounds would allow you to bi-amp your 340's with your awesome receiver

If he's using one receiver, he's not bi-amping because he's using the same amp... Your receiver doesn't double power because you use two pairs of wires... If the receiver is 200W, then it'll be able to provide 200W whether it has 4 speakers or 2 speakers connected to it...

. You may need to go thru your speaker setting and switch "bi-amp" on or let Audyssey figure it out when it calibrates. It will gain you independant "level" control for the tweets and mids and I think that can be important in our quest for sound quality.

The 340s aren't bi-ampable in the sense you're meaning... They can be bi-wired, or bi-amped (2 identical sending identical signal), but you can't bypass the crossover and actively power them independently. Dave made a post about that not so long ago.

My guess is that if you did as you suggested, it would seriously mess up the speaker sound as it would reap havoc on the crossover point... Unless Audyssey is much better than I think it is and actually supports specifically this option, which I really doubt it does... If it did it would be a crazy dynamic crossover generator using existing crossovers, nah, "fuhgetaboutit!". Besides, look at the FR of the 340SE, there's nothing to fix in the crossover point... Whatever Audyssey would do would just make things worst...

[scape]

the denon avr has discrete amps per channel i believe, so i do think in a sense it's possible to bi-amp speakers; you're right that the 340 isn't a defeatable xover though I think bi-amping might help. I read one of dave's post (i forgot the link) and I think at least doing so with my avr would provide double the amperage, assuming both amp channels are pushing it appropriately. I doubt I would bother with mucking with audyssey and tuning each amp-- but that's something i need to read more on. i think just increasing the headroom would be all i want, mostly for peaks during a movie.

unless anyone thinks i should spend my money differently, I'm planning on getting another 340 and using them for main L/R, putting my 170's back or to the side, depending on what media encoding I have more of (probably more of dolby, so probably just behind the ears on the sides, angled in) and buying a second yamaha yst-315 sub; one of these guys is 'ok', but i think 2 will be better (they're about 200$/ea). that's roughly 600$ with some new cabling.
ofcourse i could try and sell my 340 and sub, and just buy something better; i don't think i'd get much more without spending much more.

edit: looks like the denon avr does not exactly have fully discrete amps, which is unfortunate in terms of bridging power. still kicking myself in the butt for not getting an avr with pre-outs hah

[hearing specialist]

GirgleMirt: Thank you for your response. A 7.1 channel receiver has the ability to "Bi-Amp" the front speakers sending separate signals from separate channels. Bi-amping or using separate channels connected to different posts still uses the existing internal crossover. The benefit from a 7.1 channel receiver is this: Using channels/amplification from defined amplifiers internally when calibrated will gain a person separate and independant "level" control for those separate amplifier channels when driving the tweeters and midrange drivers independantly. That is the real benefit, isolated channel controls of the receiver. Even if each channel is only rated at 50 watts x 7 then each "Bi-Amped" channel is sending isolated power vs. shared wattage, measurable or not its really the isolated control and tweakability the receiver allows.

My suggestions will always encourage flexibility and control that our receivers allow. Might as well use those extra channels for something

scape: I'm gonna urge ya to get the 340's for sure my friend, you have so much receiver processing and performance waiting to be used! Tell Dave some hearing guy in Bakersfield sold you