Bi-Amping with one amp?


I understand the concept of bi-wiring. My main system is bi-wired.


I am less clear about bi-amping. It is my understanding that it means one amp drives the bass side of the speakers and one amp drives the mid/tweeter range? Is that even close to right?

Anyway, the reason I'm asking is that I temporarily have a Bryston 5 channel amp and I was wondering if its individual channels could be used to bi-amp a pair of speakers (leaving the middle channel out obviously)?
n80
I had a pair of Nautilus 802's powered by a Pass Labs Aleph 5 60 watt stereo. I got another identical Aleph 5 for cheap. Nelson Pass tells me there's no way to use them as monoblocks. So I ran cable from right channel to the woofers and left channel to the mids and tweets. 2 separate cable runs. Same with the other speaker. Only drawback is the channel powering the woofs is doing 90% of the work. So I'd swap the channels once a month. This is called passive bi-amping as the crossovers are still splitting the signal. Active bi-amping is when you have an electronic crossover and it sends signals to dedicated amplifiers. This is almost never done in the home audio, but its done at every rock concert you've ever been to. Good for high sound pressure levels.
" Active bi-amping is when you have an electronic crossover and it sends signals to dedicated amplifiers. This is almost never done in the home audio, but its done at every rock concert you've ever been to. Good for high sound pressure levels. "
  Active bi-amping is more common than you might think. I happen to be one of them who does this with a Xilica XP3060. It is a PITA to get started with but once learned allows you to fine tune anything. I won't be using passive crossovers in my personal system ever again. On the Klipsch forum there are a number of people doing this and you can search there for what they have done and the results. If you want the very best your components can deliver going active will allow you to do this.
...4 channels... only if the speakers you're hooking them up to have connections for bi-wire on the back.
The point is moot now. The Bryston has sold. Didn't even have time to try bi-amping.
"Thanks guys. The question was mostly out of curiosity. Not sure if I will actually try this but it is good to know."  

Even though the amp you wanted to bi-amp with is gone, it's still worth pursuing at some point in the future.  There are some very audible improvements to be had.