What does an impedance-matching issue "sound" like?

Thanks to everyone, and @atmasphere I am glad you chimed in (was hoping you’d be lurking here :) I am using a Backert Labs Rhumba Extreme preamp with 2 unbalanced outputs (L 1 and L2 going to the left Luxman, R1 and R2 going to the right Luxman - pictures in album linked below).

Also, all 8 KT88s have held bias steady around 485-ish since I first checked them last week.

I have had some time today to disconnect all connections, run in a single stereo configuration, then reconnect everything and give it some time to warm up, etc and make comparisons.

What I mentioned hearing before - I think it could have been my ears/imagination playing tricks on me, or simply something not properly connected or loosely connected. Everything actually sounds as it is supposed to in the parallel configuration.

What I am hearing now vs the stereo comparison is a more spacious sound field, more power in the bass in particular, and generally a stronger, beefier signal. I’m listening at about 90dB.

On the downside, it seems there is slightly more distortion in the sound running the 2 parallel amps. If you didn’t do a direct comparison it’s not likely you’d hear the difference. But there is slightly more "noise" around things like vocals, acoustic guitar plucks, etc. Again, it could be a difference in the age of the tubes, etc.

What I did was put together a small gallery of documentation for this process.
https://jsqt.smugmug.com/Luxman-MQ-88uSE-Diagrams-Measurements/n-cgz5rM/

It includes the actual block diagram of the MQ-88uSE (these amps), the specs, the instructions from Luxman on running the "C" version of this amp in parallel, as well as some additional measurements from HiFi News (UK) on this specific amp which aren’t exactly matching JA’s measurements in Stereophile.

Anyway I wanted to put all of this info together as a reference for this thread and if anyone else has ideas or questions about running 2 stereo tube amps in parallel.

Thanks again for all the info!

@jsqt, thanks for providing the additional info.

It appears that your preamp has very low output impedance, as the non-Extreme version is said to have a nominal output impedance of 75 ohms. So the somewhat low input impedance of two paralleled channels of your amp shouldn’t be any problem for it, even though the two RCA output connectors the preamp provides for each channel are almost certainly just jumpered together internally and are supplying the same signal. And in any event, as Ralph (Atmasphere) and I indicated if impedance issues were present at that interface you most likely wouldn’t be getting the good bass response you’ve described.

Also, as George and Ian (ieales) suggested trying a vertical biamp configuration could very well be worthwhile.

Enjoy! Regards,
-- Al

Thanks Al, I am curious about the vertical biamp configuration just for the sake of trying out all my options to see which sounds the best. This configuration would have benefits by running twice the output power split between the top and bottoms of the speakers?

The Volti Rivals are 3 way speakers with an external crossover (currently using jumper between the woofer and mid-horn). So it sounds like I’d use the Left channel of one amp to power the mid horn and tweeter of the left speaker and the Left channel of the 2nd amp to power the woofer of the left speaker.

The benefit here could be less distortion and more power to the individual speakers, but the trade-off between the parallel config would be re-introducing crosstalk between the 2 speakers and in theory reducing the stereo separation of the mix (vs parallel config)?

@jsqt, no, what you’ve described in the second paragraph of your post above is a horizontal biamp configuration.

In a vertical biamp configuration you would dedicate one amp to powering the left speaker and the other amp to powering the right speaker. One channel of each amp would power the low frequencies of the corresponding speaker, and the other channel of that amp would power the mids and highs of the same speaker. When identical amps are used vertical biamping is considered to be preferable to horizontal biamping.

There are several potential advantages of a vertical biamp configuration, in addition to the overall increase in power capability compared to stereo operation of a single amp:

1) In contrast to a horizontal biamp configuration, in a vertical configuration both channels of the amp are processing the same signal, and therefore interchannel crosstalk that may occur within the amp is essentially eliminated.

2) The amps can be located close to the speakers, reducing the length and potentially the sonic effects of the speaker cables.

3) Quoting a statement made a while back by GeorgeHiFi in a thread about biamping:

... the biggest advantage of vertical bi-amping is that the whole power supply joule storage of one amp, is dedicated to just one bass driver and not shared, so the bass/upper bass should be better on big dynamic transients. (unless the amps have true dual mono power supplies) which are rare.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks Al, so this vertical biamping actually sound preferable to running the 2 amps in parallel, if I am reading correctly.

So the connection from the preamp is the same as what I am using described in my post above (both L outputs to one amp both R outputs to the other amp) only no jumpers - I use both sets of speaker taps to go to the mid/hi inputs on one speaker and the bass input on the same speaker, then do the same on the other amp.

So this also effectively doubles the power going to each speaker - how does it affect impedance and is it safer for the amp and speaker?