Do you biamp your B&Ws or other comparable brands?

Thanks for the great feedback.

If I did end up biamping, then I was going to use a separate two channel amp for the rear speakers.

Your insight about the a51 offering more power with only two channels in use is priceless. In that case, I don't feel the need to biamp at all.

This may be a dumb question, but since all five inputs to the amp are connected to the preamp, do I need to do anything (setting, etc) so the amp knows only two channels of audio are being sent? Does it matter which channels I use for fronts, center and rears.

Re: biwire, I guess i will just use regular speaker cable and use the wire jumpers that come with he 803ds.

Thanks a ton.

This may be a dumb question, but since all five inputs to the amp are connected to the preamp, do I need to do anything (setting, etc) so the amp knows only two channels of audio are being sent?

See page 46 in the preamp manual. Just press the "stereo button" on the remote is all you need to do. Then only the front L & R will play, and no signal will be sent to center and rears.

Does it matter which channels I use for fronts, center and rears.

Probably not, however, looking at the back of the A51, color coding indicates that,

Ch1 - R front
Ch2 - L front
Ch3 - center
Ch4 and Ch5 - rear, but no indication for R and L, so just make sure you are consistent with connections.

You're welcome, and glad to help.

Thanks again. Love this site!

I will offer a slightly different viewpoint. When I got in this game everyone said not to passive bi-amp, because it would make no difference. I have found a different reality. My home theatre system uses Mirage OMD-28s, and I have them bi-amped, and tri-wired (audio quest gibraltar cables) with a Pioneer Elite receiver. I went from single amped to this setup, and when I did there were significant changes. I had my friend Bill listen to give me an objective opinion.

My speakers the sound plane became much more three dimensional, the bass was tighter and more visceral, and the mids and treble were cleaner. This isn't to say it will have this effect on all speakers, but it did for mine. I say give passive bi-amping a try and see if it makes a difference in your setup.

Even though my speakers can handle a lot more power than I'm feeding them, I can never even come close to using the power limits of the Pioneer. It is just too damn loud at -8 on the dial. The one additional change I made, that I think greatly benefited the setup, was to run two dedicated 20amp circuits. The Pioneer has one all to itself with a PS Audio Premier SC Power Cable. So there is never a limit on power being fed to it.

Hope this helps,
Mot

Thanks Manoterror.

For now, I'm just going to stick with the biwire option using just one output from my amp. They already sound amazing!

Thanks again.