Bi-amp and or Bi-wire???

[Jeff52]

Hello guys,
I'm ready to pull the trigger on three 340SE's, I would really like to know if there is any sonic value in Bi-amping or Bi-wiring these speakers. Thanks for the time, look forward to all replies.
Best regards, Jeff

[curtis]

Hello guys,
I'm ready to pull the trigger on three 340SE's, I would really like to know if there is any sonic value in Bi-amping or Bi-wiring these speakers. Thanks for the time, look forward to all replies.
Best regards, Jeff

Never tried bi-amping, but I heard no difference when bi-wiring.

[GirgleMirt]

I wouldn't think that bi-amping would make a difference until you're reaching the limits of your amp and your amp starts to distort, which if you're looking at a solid SS and aren't playing extremely loud probably won't happen... But maybe with very dynamic material with big transients, it could be perceivable... In effect I think it would be rather the same going for a 200W instead of 2x100W... Both would give you around a 3dB increase...

What amp are you looking at? Do you listen to music extremely loud?

Quick google, wiki:

A single amplifier can usually power a woofer and a tweeter only through a crossover filter, which protects each driver from signals outside its frequency range. However, the crossovers themselves waste power; bi-amping along with active crossover components works around this problem by putting crossover networks before the amplifiers rather than between amplifiers and loudspeakers.

Don't think the above works with most hifi speakers as no active crossover will likely be used...

Most audible differences are subtle. If at all noticeable, benefits of bi-amping cannot be realized if passive crossover networks of a speaker system are not removed. [2]. Benefits include transients are less likely to cause amplifier overload (clipping) and/or speaker damage, and reduced intermodulation distortion, elimination of errors introduced by low frequency passive crossover, reduction of load to the load presented to the power amplifier, better matching of power amplifier and speaker driver and others.

I dunno, I'd say pass, but that's my uneducated guess.

++ to curtis on biwiring. It's essentially down to appropriate wire size for the length. Running huge wires for short length give negligible improvements, if any for the application, same for running two pairs of wires...

[Funambulistic]

I was told by a salesman in a Hi-Fi shoppe, in all seriousness, that if one chose not to bi-wire or bi-amp (either would be better, in his opinion) to connect the positive lead to the upper (usually tweeter) positive post and the negative lead to the lower negative post (with jumpers in place, of course). I asked why and was told it sounds better. It was hard for me to keep a straight face...

[GirgleMirt]

I was told by a salesman in a Hi-Fi shoppe, in all seriousness, that if one chose not to bi-wire or bi-amp (either would be better, in his opinion) to connect the positive lead to the upper (usually tweeter) positive post and the negative lead to the lower negative post (with jumpers in place, of course). I asked why and was told it sounds better. It was hard for me to keep a straight face...

Ha! I was told the same thing by my local Totem dealer... Totem says that you can play around with the rear terminals for different tones! What? Yeah.. It's on their website...

Single Wiring is definitely a very good way to proceed as long as the four terminals are there. The user has the choice of connecting just the lower two terminals and through this obtain a certain “tone”. Reconnecting the wire to the upper two terminals gives the user more high frequency emphasis. Connecting the red positive at the bottom and the black at the top (diagonally opposite) or vice versa will give you two more “tone” options.

In conclusion the customer/dealer has four possibilities with a high quality single wire. We recommend the diagonal connection when using the single wire to create a greater balance.

haha... Well I dunno, I guess if you like to 'tweak', it's a cheap 'tweak' to play around with... Who knows, maybe you will 'hear' an improvement!

[DougMac]

Hello guys,
I'm ready to pull the trigger on three 340SE's, I would really like to know if there is any sonic value in Bi-amping or Bi-wiring these speakers. Thanks for the time, look forward to all replies.
Best regards, Jeff

Jeff,
I've got 340SE's across the front. When I wired my home theater, I did two cable runs and have wall plates with two sets of banana plugs. I tried bi-wiring and could hear no difference. I have to go from 7.1 to 5.1 to bi-wire and I'd rather keep the 7.1

At some point in the future, I may go to separate amps and might get an extra amp to b-wire, something like 2 Emotiva XPA-3's. That would probably be overkill.

Tell us more about your layout and equipment. I've very happy with my 340's. They are L/C/R, with 170's for side surrounds and HTM-200's for rear. They are amazing!

[P Seastrand]

I suggest you read this older post from Dave on the subject:

http://forum.ascendacoustics.com/sho...17&postcount=4

[Jeff52]

Thanks to all who replied. The only reason I ask about Bi-amping is that I'm planning on a receiver purchase that has Bi-amp capability by using the surround back channels with the mains output and I have a EMO UPA-2 laying around. I really did not think Bi-wiring would add any sonic virtues, again thanks to all.
Jeff

[Jeff52]

I suggest you read this older post from Dave on the subject:

http://forum.ascendacoustics.com/sho...17&postcount=4

Thanks P for the useful explanation, and thanks to Dave for the insightful post.
Jeff

[jbistany]

For what its worth, I just bought the 340SE's ran them for a week then bi-wired them just to tinker around and because I had two free channels. I heard no difference what so ever. They sound great as is!