Tri-amp with stereo SS on bottom / tube monos top



I've been considering a set-up of driving my Tyler Acoustic taylo ref monitors with a solid state amp for the lows and a pair of tube monoblocks for the midrange/highs.

Do the amps have to be exactly matching in output? If not, is there a curve of diminishing return where they should be close? Does it matter at all?
kevinw
There are tooo many pro-s and cons you should consider before you step on such decision.

PASSIVE bi-tri-amplification. In tri-amplification the task of matching amps even more sophisticated than on bi-amplification certainly.
Amps must have an equal gain and somewhat equal input sencitivity. You might prefer in this case an adjustable gain amplifiers that can be adjusted to your ear or implement an independed volume controls on each amp hooked up to the binding posts of your speaker if the gains do not match.
IN RESULT you will get a large flexibility to adjust to your ears and room the right combination from three amps, but the cost of wires to hook-up volume controls and the volume controls themselves will get very very close to...>>>

ACTIVE bi-tri-amplification using an electronic crossover. In this case you have more flexibility to choose an amplifier but you will have to take internal speaker crossover out which some certainly will say will kill the speaker as a designed brand i.e. there will be no Taylo ref it will be something else. How will "it" sound you never know unless you try and maybe after exersising both of these cases you will end up with.....>>>

ONE AMP that has enough power, costs alike or less than three(consider a pair of monos as one stereo)
thanks for the feedback.

this article from Cary Audio got me thinking about this:
http://www.caryaudio.com/html/biamping.html

in this example, two identical stereo amps are used. this led me to believe, as your message confirms, that matching the output is critical and if the equipment can't be matched without endless 'add-ons', you've reached the point of deminished, if not no, return.
I've done this quite successfully, in numerous setups, sometimes the amps had variable outputs......I would tune by ear, then fine tune with a rented spectrum analyzer to get it perfectly balanced, surprisingly I did pretty good by ear.
A lot a club PA pro audio systems are designed tri-amped like that. The Grateful Dead's famous "wall of sound" PA was built in this fashion. I've done it both passive and active......one system with no varible output on the amps, had an electronic crossover with volume controls for each amp. You can get the best of both worlds, SS on the bottom & tubes for the mids and highs. My current set up is factory built for that, I have big Genesis speakers, they have their own SS bass or sub amp, then I'm using tubes for the mid ribbons and tweeter ribbons.
Yes This can make for a plesent listening system, I use 2 mac 60's 2 mc-75's and 4 dyna MK-3 along with an old Dyna 400 on the bottom, gains are easy since I use equalizers rather than cross-overs I can also play my Dolby 5.1 system for movies, I use a 100 watt tube amp I constructed for the center channel.
Cross-over's are ok but I'm not wild about the slope of most passive can be done with auto type bullet hi-and low pass in-lines this is for the buget minded.
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