2. amps-preamps
  3. 992190615

Monoblocks did not work

Help me with this problem pl. I had one Classe CA-400 driving Dunlavy V'S with all Classe front end. I was very happy with the sound, so happy I refused to upgrade for 3 years. That the power bug hit me. What if I buy another CA-400 and run each as monoblocks. I did, with all other components remaining same( same IC's going to each amp). The result was way worse than expected. Thin , hashy, ambient sound. Power of 800W/ch (into 4 ohms) became 2400 W/ch, still bad sound. What happened? How do I make use of the beast (120lbs) that I have aquired?
nilthepill
sean
6,231 posts
 
Skip the bridging and go straight to bi-amping. While active biamplification is best, you can still get some gain by doing this passively. As you've noticed, most amps do not sound good when bridged. Sean
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beemer
444 posts
 
Nilthepill:

Shame on me, I assumed you were using single-ended interconnects. Rat Shack will not have any balanced Y
adaptors. Tough call here. I still believe your sound will improve from biamping, however you will need balanced y connectors (not sure these are available) or a second run of balanced cable (if) your preamp has 2 sets of balanced outputs! Good luck!

Paul
sqjudge
96 posts
 
Paul, you are correct about the load the amp sees. A strapped or monoed amp can produce a lot of distortion. Each channel of the stereo amp now just amplifies one half of the waveform. Lets say there was a channel imbalance between the channels and now the positive portion of the signal is not the same amplitude as the negative. This could amount to a lot of distortion in an amp with a channel imbalance.
nilthepill OP
842 posts
 
I called Classe to day and asked for their opinion on the subject. " two much power for easy load speaker" they said. If I had hooked up to difficult load , it would have sounded better. Robert Adam re-iterated his recommendation if vertical bi-amping and swore (close) that I would get much better results than my current sound. So I am off to getting a new two pairs of same cable make with one pair out and two pairs in at the amp. Thx all for your support!!!!!
zippyy
98 posts
 
Sean
I think your terminology is incorrect. Horizontal (amping) uses both channels of one single amp to drive the low freqs of both speakers, so you end up with one stereo amp driving the lows and one stereo amp driving the highs.Is this what you mean?
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