bi-amping with Mc352 and Mc2102

Hi Larry, you seem to be a mac fan like myself. I owned the 800N and didnt care for it, powered it with a mc402 and just couldnt get the bass to do anything. Previous owner had a pair of levinson 336's bi amped with similar poor results. Bi amping without an active crossover wont help here. If your prepared to spend $$$ on a 2102 / MC352 and are not married to the 802N sell both and treat yourself to a beautiful used MC2000. Sell the 802 for a better and efficient speaker. Be prepared for the different powercord/cables suggestions...load a crap. Whatever I tried on my 800N was always the same result..anemic bass and a wide overpowering imaged midrange, no linearity at all.

Thank you for the input, but can anyone help me with the pairing of tubes and solid state, along with different output power? Plus, with out adding a crossover and utilizing the seperate input terminals on the speakers, am I getting closer or further away from optimizing my equipmet's potential. My preamp, a Supratek Cabernet, has two set's of rca outputs. Currently I am using the singel set of balanced outputs. So, I am really trying to get to the best set up I can, using the gear I have, while adding an additional amplifer. Confusing, yes, but interesting, definatley!

Hi Larry

I have done something very similar - a McIntosh MC7200 SS amp and a Conrad-Johnson MV55 tube amp on my JM Lab Electra 926s. Getting the gain to match is the tricky part but in my case, it ended up working out pretty well. The 7200 has gain controls but I had to max them out and still didn't quite have enough gain to match the CJ. Then I realized I could switch the input sensitivity to 1.4V to get a little more and it turns out, it was just enough.

In your case however, the MC352 and 2102 have neither option so your only chance is that they "happen to have" the right amount of gain to work well together. If you don't get the gain to match correctly, you definately won't be getting your system's full potential and will be better off with simply one or the other amp, as Jaybo suggested.

Otherwise, as John said, you need an active crossover which will really complicate things. For me, I didn't keep the biamped setup very long. I now use bispeakering and that works much better with the amps I have. Good luck! Arthur

Larry, just as another ingredient here I have the 352 as well and power the Revel F32's and I Bi-Wired and found that to make enough difference to keep me happy.

Larryrosen, search for member "ljgj" here, he used the setup (MC352 and 2102) described by you, he hasn´t been posting lately, but always was very helpful.