Is it good to drive the magnepan 3.6?

1) NAD 218 THX (not enough juice)

2) Parasound 3500 (lots of power, a bit bright)

3) Parasound A21 (v nice, warm, full)

4) Parasound JC1's (sublime, very full rich sound)

5) Innersound ESL 300 (massive power, never runs out, very detailed, great match)

6) Bel Canto Ref 1000's (massive effortless power, very detailed, not warm)

7) McIntosh 501's ( not a match, sounded muddy )

8) Cary Audio 500MB's (tube like sound, HUGE Bass, great match)

9) Bryston 7B's (power, nice, but not my favorite)

10) Pass Labs X 350's (good amp not my favorite)

11) Spectron Musician III ( I bought after I alreay had the Cary to try it out, nice, but to my ear, not as detailed as the Carys)

Sorry, it's only 11, unless I forgot one?? Cary's are my favorites, I also loved the big Parasound JC-1's and the Innersounds. The only amps I had that just didn't match, and it could have been with my other gear, were the McIntosh and PassLabs.

Ahh, I forgot, because I only had it for a short time, the Musical Fidelity NuVista power amp. So that's the 12th one. I didn't like it with the Maggies. I sold it to a buddy with Linn speakers and it sounded great. I think he still has it, they are hard to find amps.

Answers to your questions:

" I was wondering, if I "bridged" my power amp to function as "monoblocks" to drive a pair of magnepan 3.6. Will it cause the amplifier to "see" a 2-ohm load? Does that stress the amplifier's current capacity and will the amp be overheated?"

Many people state that when using monoblocks then amplifier will "see" the half of the load of the speakers. Never understood what they mean since impedance is the INTRINSIC property of the load.

What will happenned is that your maximum voltage will double (and thus maximum current will double) which will sharply decrease all kind of distortions associated with full output of the amplifier - and its huge number of distortions and all of then ugly.

So , no you not only will not stress your amplifier(s) but opposite - you will run them at half output with much less distortions - you will have much more relaxed presentation yet with deeper bass and greater slam and if you will be capable to run both in fully balanced mode then your will hear music without practically any electronic distortions in all its sweet glory. Your bandwidth will double, your slew rate will double and many other audioable goodies will be shown.

Just do it right and you will never be sorry again! If Spectron Audio done it then everybody can do it!
Simon

Simon

It sees half as much impedance because it has to supply twice as much current for a given voltage. With most amps the red speaker terminal swings back and forth from plus to minus while the black is fixed at ground potential. So lets say at some instant your red terminal is at 8V across 4 ohms and you'll have 2 amps of current flowing. If bridged to mono you'll be hooked to the other channel's red terminal which will be at -8V while the other is at +8V for a total of 16V across the 4 ohms which causes 4 amps to flow. If you ask 8V to supply 4 amps it is seeing a 2 ohm load.

"It sees half as much impedance because it has to supply twice as much current for a given voltage"

Well if voltage is given but current is doubled then impedance should drop to the half - BUT it cannot be because speaker impedance does not depend on amplfier, weather and other extreneous factors.

In your own example - 16 volts across 4 Ohms - supply twice more current,4A, then 8 volts across THE SAME load, 4 Ohm i.e. 2A.

Just follow the Ohm law (V=IxR) and everything will be just fine.