No, You Cannot Bi-Amp

Nottop - I gather from your description that you simply removed the jumpers from your speaker binding posts and bi-amped your Maggies with the passive crossover already onboard. That approach maintains the integrity that Magnepan built into them.

If you had bypassed the integral passive crossovers and introduced an active crossover between your preamp and your two amplifiers, you would have opened a can of worms because of all the variables you would have had to match to restore the original balance. This is why amateurs are warned against jumping into bi-amping too eagerly. It is extremely difficult to get it right.

Hi macro -

yes - that's exactly what i did.
I'm not using an external crossover (although many tell me it's the way to go).
It sounds so good with the bi-amping and the crossover that came stock.

I think one of the reasons that bi-amping is a lightning rod is that there is much misinformation or opinion masquerading as fact.

People also mix non-compatible gear, like a fast SS amp with a 'slower' tube amp on the highs. (strongly held opinion) While not taking into account the latency of the amps being used, can introduce phase effects. (maybe testable)

The endless combinations of filter choices, points, slopes and type just feed the fires.

I'd suspect (again, opinion) that a properly setup (yet more opinion) bi-amp system could yield positive results.

I couldn't imagine my Panels NOT benefiting from a pair of same amps, given the close to 50:50 power distribution crossover point of 600hz.

Some good points have been made above. With respect to passive biamping, another commonly overlooked point is that in that arrangement both the high frequency amp and the low frequency amp have to output the voltage range of the full range signal. Which means that if a low powered tube amp is used for the highs and a much higher powered solid state amp is used for the lows, most of the power capability of the solid state amp will be unusable and wasted, because the maximum volume setting that can be utilized will be limited by the clipping point of the low powered amp. Also, of course, gain matching is likely to be an issue in that situation.

Regards,
-- Al

Relative power needed is almost entirely governed by crossover point.

If you crossed over at 10khz, you could make due with a 30 watt tube amp on top of a 300 watt SS.

Than, other issues would come to the fore.