What should I upgrade?

Is it possible to bridge my s300 so it outputs 600w and buy another s300 to bridge? If so, how does one "bridge" an amp?

Hi Devon,

No, a fully balanced stereo amplifier such as yours can in a sense be thought of as being two amplifiers on a single chassis, each of which is already bridged. By that I mean that each channel contains two amplifiers, one of which amplifies a signal that is inverted in phase relative to the signal being processed by the other amplifier, with the speaker being connected between the "hot" outputs of the two amplifiers. That results in twice as much voltage appearing across the speaker, relative to what a single-ended (unbalanced) amplifier with otherwise identical characteristics would provide.

So bridging a single speaker between one of the output terminals of one channel and one of the output terminals of the other channel, with the inputs to the two channels wired out-of-phase relative to each other, would not result in any added power capability.

Also, fyi, bridging results in the amplifier seeing the speaker impedance divided by two, so your nominally 4 ohm speakers would be seen as 2 ohms, which many amplifiers cannot handle. A major reason that Bel Canto specifies a 4 ohm minimum speaker impedance for your amplifier figures to be that the factor of 2 applies in the case of fully balanced operation as well.

Regards,
-- Al

Hi Develyn,

Your Kimber Cables are fine, Kimber Cables are excellent and represent very good value for the money, and as you go up the line they certainly do get better, like most things.

Keep in mind that when tweaking your system with, racks, cables, accessories or whatever, (and they all do improve the sound) you will improve what you already have, but it will not take your level of sound reproduction to completely new areas, that currently do not exist in your system, such as lower bass octaves. For that, you need to upgrade or add equipment.

I wouldn't bridge your amp either, 300 watts into 4 ohms is plenty of power for the 1.6's and from what others stated above it sounds like a bad idea. I also thought that bridging can create additional distortion, clipping or whatever.., especially when compared to upgrading to monoblocks.

Rich

OK, reading through threads like this I always like to check out the systems of the respondents to see if they own, or have owned, the specific gear you are asking questions about.

Here are some of my observations from someone who has owned Maggies for years (and sadly others, but I always come back to the Maggies) and used many different amps and subs with them. Here we go:

1) get a new amp first. You won't know what else you need until you find out what the Maggies can do with a well matched amp. Currently you are just a wee bit under powered. Bel Canto amps sound great with 1.6qr's. I had the BelCanto Evo4 bridged and it was excellent. The best amp I ever used with my 1.6qr's was the Innersound ESL amp. It was absolutely stellar, and woke up the the whole speaker, bass response from my Velodyne DD15 set up program was measured consistantly (in a room about your size with the speakers 4 ft from the wall) at 40hrz. The next I would suggest would be the BelCanto Ref1000 MB that I suggested at the beginning of the thread.

2) Only after you have done that, you may want to try a sub, but a very, very fast sub. Also, it depends on the type of connections you want to make. The JL Audio is a great sub, but you will have to split the outputs of your DacIII to get a line level signal to them, and I think they are pretty expensive. There are other very good subs you can get that you can run the speaker level connection to, that integrate very well, for much less: Velodyne DD series, Rel B series (you can run these for both HT through low level and for stereo through speaker level at the same time, very cool, oh yeah, and sound GREAT), Vandersteen 2wq (great match) are all excellent choices as well.

3) Your 4vs is an excellent cable, especailly since it's copper, and helps mellow out any potential brightness. You could move up to the 8tc for relatively little money, or you could add another set of 4vs and use one strand for each connection. That could be an even better idea.

Good luck, your building an excellent system.

after trying just about every brand of power cables, i'm using the biggest gauge cables for most things now. to me, it seems i get the best sound out of just unconstricting the power supply as much as possible. mostly ps audio 6 and 8 gauge. love my tg audio for less power hungry stuff, too.

and i agree with rich above in general, but i have seen great results in improving bass with power cables on components, which is why i suggested it (though i have nooooo idea why this is). you can't make a component better, but the idea is to at least get what you can out of everything and for what it's worth, i've never NOT seen an improvement in a component with upgraded power cords. hell, i've actually had well shielded power cables reduce hum from things like cable boxes and dvd players. and cables don't need to be expensive to be good at all, my $50 "my audio cables" power cord sounds as good on many things as my $750 cords, better on some things.

so my best idea over all for your system (that is, if i were spending the cash) would be to try a couple of mac cables on your stuff and then get (on demo, if possible) two smaller-but-stereo subs to fill out the sound. i love the sound of maggie 1.6's and i believe that getting more powerful amps wouldn't be as cost-effective as getting two (or one, even) subs to fill out the sound, but again, i've not owned them.

i'd still love for someone to comment on larger gauge speaker cables with the maggies.