Am I wasting money on the theory of Bi-amping?

OP (explain to a 3rd grader) some of these responses are for physics majors)

I was ASSUMING your speakers had a removable jumper, AND their internal crossover was designed for OPTIONAL Bi-Amping (or bi-wiring).

EITHER

leave jumper installed: internal crossover performs as standard: full division of the signal input: resulting, after internal crossover: separate signals for each driver in the system (2 way/3 way)

OR, remove the Jumper, which then uses the internal wiring of the crossover differently: part of the crossover drives only the woofer; the other part drives only the mids and highs.

My AR-2ax crossover is designed for either bi-wire or biamp.

common ground: remove jumper, now crossover portion for the woofer becomes separate from the crossover parts for the mids and highs

NOTE: the circuit includes subsequent in-line connections for level controls to balance the volume of the mid and tweet relative to each driver. This allows you to adjust for a dead space or a live space, or your personal tastes. Many vintage speakers provided level controls, which is separate from removable jumpers.

Jumper removed, bi-wire is possible: choose a cable construction you believe is best for mid/high signals from the amp; and use a separate cable, it’s construction you believe is best for bass notes.

Jumper removed: bi-amp is also possible: one amp in/out of internal crossover feeds the woofer only. other amp in/out of the crossover feeds mid/high drivers only.

Using an external crossover is relative to the removable jumper/internal crossover design.

Bi-Amp ASSUMES, because the bass needs much more power than the mids/highs: use one amp (less power needed) for the mid/high side of the speakers to the external terminals that feed the mid/high side of the internal crossover

and

use a separate amp, more powerful for the bass hungry notes.

Thus, using 2 identical amps is providing the same max power to the crossover, which is why I said no real advantage.

..............................

thus my example: one amp (tube amp perhaps), less powerful for the mids/highs which need less power; and a separate more powerful amp for the power hungry bass, perhaps SS to get more power/less heat/smaller body than a big hot tube amp.

Affordability is also involved, large powerful tube amp for woofer is much more expensive than an equal powered SS amp.

@elliottbnewcombjr : You are using the word Bi amp in such a way as to cconfuse us more.

There is only one explanation for biamp.  Bi-amp requires an external [line level] crossover BEFORE the amplifiers.  The example above is a bi wire set up, with or without jumpers, as a passive [speaker level] crossover is AFTER the amplifiers.  One of the side effects in the bi wire set up is the amps are still running full range and do not specialize in one band: the crossover after them is filtering part of the full range amplfier output out.   Electronic crossover bi-amp divides the preamp output into two, LF and HF, sending only HF to one amp, only LF to the other amp per the instructions from the crossover.  Now you can have the large amp for bass and it will pay off. 

Brad      

lonemountain

"Passive Bi-Amping

Passive bi-amping is what you typically see when bi-amping is discussed. It’s the most common. With Passive bi-amping, you are still using the crossover parts of your speaker to send the correct frequencies to each speaker driver."

this is for speakers whose crossover is designed to alternately accept bi-amp via a removable jumper, as the AR-2ax crossover is. 

"Bi-Amping with an Active System

You can also bi-amp with an active system. This is not very common and only available with a limited number of brands. With an active system, you actually have a separate electronic crossover in front of your two or three amps. It gives each amp the correct set of frequencies and you remove the crossover from the speakers."

My system-

Opera turntable with RS Labs RS-A1 tonearm and Miyajima Shilabe cartridge

Wright Sound Silver Top phono stage

47 labs Shigaraki cd transport

Hagerman Chime DAC

Supratek Cabernet Dual with 6h30 outputs and 101d outputs

tweeter amp Decware SE34I.2

bass amps two SE84CS series strapped into mono

speakers Sonist Concerto 4's

all wired up with mostly 1'st generation Stage III Concepts

Sounds really good to me with the EL34 tubes for the highs being pushed with a 101D

and EL84 tubes being pushed with a 6H30

I think it is system dependent and there are no fast and sure rules!

Bi-amping in a truly high-end system, that has already achieved the level of being highly resolving by virtue of the speakers, amps, and pre-amp is generally a waste of time and money in my experience. However, the one EXCEPTION I have experienced is when one particular amplification set-up may be great for the lows, but not so much for the mids and highs. Long story short, depending on the genres of music you listen to, and especially, if you listen to music with lots of acoustic instruments regardless of genre, you might find that a solid state amp is perfect for achieving tight, punchy low end, but not "gentle and sensitive" enough to correctly re-produce the subtle nuances of various acoustic instruments and vocals, where tube amp might do a better job. Of course there are other technical issues to be considered (ie, impedance mis-matches, etc), so the bottom line is, make certain you have a competent sales/technical rep who knows what they are doing....to go in the bi-amping direction creates issues that one generally never has to consider in a non-bi-amped set-up. Finally, this can become a frustrating (and expensive) situation if you fail to do adequate research concerning your existing system’s parameters.