Amp Config for B&W 802D's

Bi-amping is probably the best way to go from a theoretical standpoint. Driving the bass with a larger amp than the mids and highs makes sense because the mids and highs just do not need as much power. Option 2 and 3 are no different. Biwiring is not going to have any effect, it is electrically the same as direct wiring; the arguements for biwiring are misapplications of engineering principles and are laughable. Driving each speaker with a 400 watt amp will almost certainly give you the same experience as biamping because a 400 watt amp is going to drive the 802D to its max spl and will do so without overdriving the amps. A large stereo amp will also give you the same experience as any of the other options UNLESS you drive the 802 to high spl's on large orchesteral pieces. I did that several times in deciding what amp to buy to drive a smaller version of the 800 series - the amps were hooked up to 802D's and I tried this more than once. With a 400 watt MC 402 Mcintosh , I could get the 802D's to turn on the power guard. Now keep in mind that I am talking Mahler's 2nd Symphony, Fischer conducting, 1st movement, which has some really heavy duty bass portions and Karajan on Beethoven's Eroica and spl's which are probably as far as the 802D can go, about 110 measured with a radio shack meter, and the power guard lites just flickered a couple of times. For what it is worth, I also listened to the same speakers driven by a Classe 200 watt stereo amp, the largest Classe that I could find to demo in a 100 mile radius. I thought the 402 did a better job of driving the speakers. In short, all of your options are equivalent unless you want to listen very loud and with only then for a certain type of music. The 802D is a nice speaker - good choice. One thing to keep in mind, you could do something like hook up a pair of 1.2 kw mono's to the 802D but that may not give you a whole lot of return on those speakers - it is possible to cook a speaker without overdriving the amplifier and sending it into clipping - just feed the speaker more current than it can handle. From my experience, a 400 watt stereo amp will drive those speakers to about as loud as they will go. Let us know what you decide.

Abbey Road uses 2 400w monoblocks to drive their D800's. http://www.bowers-wilkins.com/display.aspx?infid=1621 I use a single pair of Omicron monos. It depends what you want to do, I went with the higher quality amp that still has plenty of current.

Hello Paul,

I one a pir of B&W 802D and I compared option 1 vs option 3 in very powerful set of amplifiers, see :

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/frr.pl?ramps&1208544976&read&3&4&

Please note that monoblocks run in fully balanced mode with all its advantages (besides power)

All The best
Rafael