Plinius SA102, single versus mono?

Ngjockey,

thanks a lot for such an elaborate. It is more than generous to give such a broad description. Some of this is a well deserved tribute to your Genesis :-).
If my funds will allow I will extend the set-up to two monos.

In your opinion it is more vertical (bridging) or horizontal biamping when the difference is more pronounced?

Take care,

Thomas.

Greetings Thomaskatewitz; Ive had dual mono Plinius 102s for about 2 years now { serial #s 2173 in black/ and #1865 in silver}in my opinion everything stays the same, no harhness in tone, soundstaging remains intact but your micro and macrodynamics, because of increased power go through the roof, albeit pleasently.Everything that makes this a great amplifier just gets better and more pronounced, bass which has always been a strongsuit is simply fantastic with detailed drums, skins,kickdrums, rimshots and circular drum patterns as the artist works his kit very you- are-there- realistic with excellent seperation. Guitar strings with changing tone colors rising out of a dense sonic envelope all the while allowing you to focus on any part of the spectrum, no congealing .As for the midrange, its a in "the room presence" with any well recorded vocalists and especially so with unprocessed or direct to disc accoustic settings, thats not to say rock and pop are not worth a listen, just that it may have you searching for better recordings.

Vertical biamping with identical amps will make negligible difference unless severely underpowered in the first place. Bridging quadruples the total power and that will only increase by 6dB. Average listening is around 80dB. Vertical biamping will reduce intermodulation caused by reactance of woofer/crossover but, again, negligable. The only good reasons to vertically biamp is to:

1) Use different amplifiers, specialized for their purpose. But that opens up a can of worms (gain, impedance, linearity, phase ...). The Wisdom's active brain has been poo-poo'd for being too complex but there are several good reasons. Wasn't as much as a problem ten years ago when manufacturers tried to follow standards.

2) To eliminate or eviscerate those pesky passive parasites and replace with active crossovers. Even my expensive speakers use only semi-active crossovers.

In my system, the Plinius amps were used in balanced and bridged mode for both sets of speakers. The Genesis "stealth" amp is vertically biamped and proprietary. For anybody reading this that is unfamiliar with the Plinius, it has a rotary knob on the back to select either RCA stereo, XLR stereo, RCA mono or XLR mono (differential). For the bridged modes, both positive speaker terminals are used.

Horizontal biamping is a term I don't like, even when bridging stereo to mono. Logically, there really shouldn't be any better imaging and channel separation but the Plinius leap-frogged in that respect. The drawback of bridging is that it is similar to reducing the load by half. Also, many, if not most, amps just don't sound as good when bridged. They are specifically built to sound the way they do as they are. If they wanted monoblocks, they would have built them and charged four times as much.

This is where Plinius deserves the tribute. The Gennies are a steady 4 ohm but those Kappas dipped down to 2 ohms at 90 Hz. To actually sound better (and not release their smoke) under that difficult load when bridged is a credit to their designer.

I've had some more time with the mates and I'll reaffirm what I said earlier. They're not rude but completely unapologetic. For a while, I thought I had a compatibility problem with the bass amp. Turned out to be that I had listened to too many live albums in a row. They close-miked the bass drums and I was getting more subsonics than bass. My chair was rockin' and I barely heard the drums. It's not a rocking chair. I'll say sorry to the neighbours later. Screw it, I'm moving.

Ngjockey,

I must say I'm impressed with your "ease" of writing.
Shouldn't you be writing for some Soundsatge, Stereophile - you name it - magazine?
You transfer your experience in so vivid way, that you do not have a doubt.

Great thank you.

Thanks, but I don't write fiction.