Bi-amping + speaker crossovers = redundant?

NO! The crossovers determine how much power each section of the speaker gets, if you have no crossover the tweeter and mid gets as much power as the woofer, a sure recipe for disaster. What you are looking for is an external electronic crossover which attenuates the signal before the amp sees it. You can also remove the crossover from the cabinet to improve the sound. Even if what you propose was possible the amps would require rebalancing every time you changed the level.

It certainly is possible but unless the speakers are two way then you will still need to leave part of the crossover in place.

Any decent external active crossover will also have volume control for the outputs so you can match everything up. Once you get that set you can change the volume with your preamp as normal.

Here is a link with a lot more info on biamping:

http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm

Mark

My speakers are two-way. My idea was to connect one integrated amplifier to the tweeters, and another one (more powerful) to the woofers. The article about bi-amping (thanks for the link!) does not seem to address such a possibility, hence my confusion.

I second Stan's comments. You need to keep the low frequencies out of the tweeters, or you will destroy them. You need to keep the high frequencies out of the woofers, or (at best) you'll mess up the frequency response in the crossover region. Tone controls on the integrated amps are unlikely to accomplish these things adequately. And at best you'll wind up with a very crude approximation of what the speaker designer intended his crossover network to accomplish, which will undoubtedly sound poor. There is also the practical issue of having two separate volume controls, as Stan mentioned.

Finally, to the extent that low frequencies are not kept out of the power amplifier section of the integrated amp that feeds the tweeters, using a more powerful amp on the woofers will be pointless. How loud you can turn up the volume will be limited by the clipping point of the lower powered amp, if the lower powered amp is allowed to see most or all of the bass content of the signal.

Oftentimes simpler is better!

Regards,
-- Al