Ideas for Biamp with mc611 and mc275?

@raysmtb1 

What crossover device do you use for bi-amp?

I saw your system, is mc275 used for the higher ends?

My speakers were designed as a bi-amp speaker. There were four connections on the back of the speaker cabinet instead of 2. If that’s what your speakers have been, you’re fine the speaker company has designed it to be crossed over inside the speaker. When the signal gets sent from the amplifiers, they both send a full signal. The crossover is what filters out what the speaker wants. If you don’t have a speaker that is designed with that kind of crossover then you’re gonna need to rip out the existing crossover and use an electronic crossover. 

I looked up your speakers, and you are good to go. Just take two separate outputs from your preamp and put them into the two separate amplifiers. The magic happens inside the speaker. For instants on the back of your preamp, you may have a RCA set of outputs and a XLR set of outputs. Run the XL wires to the MC 275 and the RCA’s to the MC 601. You’ll be good to go because the preamplifier will feed the voltage to each amplifier at the same rate. If you don’t have two different outputs, then just use a Y splitter and runs one of each to the amplifiers. That’s it you don’t need anything else. Hope this helps. I’ve been doing it for years and it sounds great.

So I have been thinking about biamping with two MC601s and one MC275. My pre is the c2300 that has two outputs and my speakers are set up for biwiring. 
 

Would this work or would I need two Mc275? How do I control the gain differences?  The c2300 allows adjustments of gain for each input but I’m not sure it does for each output. 

I applaud your initiative. Unfortunately, it is clear not many have ventured into this territory. There is very limited guidance, and Many I hear go back to the way it was

I’ve tried to learn about this and most are very unclear what Will happen. There are voltage differences between different amplifiers that will require level adjusting via crossover I guess.

And then you are faced with constant manipulation and in light of all the various recording Quality differences I am not sure if it’s worth going down this path. And you could have a result where it doesn’t sound very good

I looked at the amplifiers designed for biamping from McIntosh, 451 and 901 and they look very good. And expensive. However, these things generate a ton of heat. The 901 is the equivalent of a portable heater set to low continuously.

The 901 uses about 900 Watts from wall when in use which translates to 3000 to 4000 BTUs, which equates to about 10 bodies in a room. A human generates about 300 BTUs  sitting on the couch. And those that buy these amplifiers have dedicated air conditioning to minimize the heat impact. If you’ve ever had a lot of people in a room it gets very hot very quickly, and that’s what these amplifiers do to your room.

Quality tube amplifiers lose their appeal in this situation which is really sad. Maybe a lesser Power amplifier from Mac, ie 275 Will be perfectly wonderful for the upper range drivers. And I would especially be interested to know how biamping works out. I was tempted to try the mac stereo 1501 which is less powerful and generates less heat.

Another huge problem is all the additional cables you need to deal with, which offers all kinds of new challenges especially if you have a great speaker cable that now has to be supplemented with other cables.

So many issues.