Vertical biamping with identical amps will make negligible difference unless severely underpowered in the first place. Bridging quadruples the total power and that will only increase by 6dB. Average listening is around 80dB. Vertical biamping will reduce intermodulation caused by reactance of woofer/crossover but, again, negligable. The only good reasons to vertically biamp is to:
1) Use different amplifiers, specialized for their purpose. But that opens up a can of worms (gain, impedance, linearity, phase ...). The Wisdom's active brain has been poo-poo'd for being too complex but there are several good reasons. Wasn't as much as a problem ten years ago when manufacturers tried to follow standards.
2) To eliminate or eviscerate those pesky passive parasites and replace with active crossovers. Even my expensive speakers use only semi-active crossovers.
In my system, the Plinius amps were used in balanced and bridged mode for both sets of speakers. The Genesis "stealth" amp is vertically biamped and proprietary. For anybody reading this that is unfamiliar with the Plinius, it has a rotary knob on the back to select either RCA stereo, XLR stereo, RCA mono or XLR mono (differential). For the bridged modes, both positive speaker terminals are used.
Horizontal biamping is a term I don't like, even when bridging stereo to mono. Logically, there really shouldn't be any better imaging and channel separation but the Plinius leap-frogged in that respect. The drawback of bridging is that it is similar to reducing the load by half. Also, many, if not most, amps just don't sound as good when bridged. They are specifically built to sound the way they do as they are. If they wanted monoblocks, they would have built them and charged four times as much.
This is where Plinius deserves the tribute. The Gennies are a steady 4 ohm but those Kappas dipped down to 2 ohms at 90 Hz. To actually sound better (and not release their smoke) under that difficult load when bridged is a credit to their designer.
I've had some more time with the mates and I'll reaffirm what I said earlier. They're not rude but completely unapologetic. For a while, I thought I had a compatibility problem with the bass amp. Turned out to be that I had listened to too many live albums in a row. They close-miked the bass drums and I was getting more subsonics than bass. My chair was rockin' and I barely heard the drums. It's not a rocking chair. I'll say sorry to the neighbours later. Screw it, I'm moving.
1) Use different amplifiers, specialized for their purpose. But that opens up a can of worms (gain, impedance, linearity, phase ...). The Wisdom's active brain has been poo-poo'd for being too complex but there are several good reasons. Wasn't as much as a problem ten years ago when manufacturers tried to follow standards.
2) To eliminate or eviscerate those pesky passive parasites and replace with active crossovers. Even my expensive speakers use only semi-active crossovers.
In my system, the Plinius amps were used in balanced and bridged mode for both sets of speakers. The Genesis "stealth" amp is vertically biamped and proprietary. For anybody reading this that is unfamiliar with the Plinius, it has a rotary knob on the back to select either RCA stereo, XLR stereo, RCA mono or XLR mono (differential). For the bridged modes, both positive speaker terminals are used.
Horizontal biamping is a term I don't like, even when bridging stereo to mono. Logically, there really shouldn't be any better imaging and channel separation but the Plinius leap-frogged in that respect. The drawback of bridging is that it is similar to reducing the load by half. Also, many, if not most, amps just don't sound as good when bridged. They are specifically built to sound the way they do as they are. If they wanted monoblocks, they would have built them and charged four times as much.
This is where Plinius deserves the tribute. The Gennies are a steady 4 ohm but those Kappas dipped down to 2 ohms at 90 Hz. To actually sound better (and not release their smoke) under that difficult load when bridged is a credit to their designer.
I've had some more time with the mates and I'll reaffirm what I said earlier. They're not rude but completely unapologetic. For a while, I thought I had a compatibility problem with the bass amp. Turned out to be that I had listened to too many live albums in a row. They close-miked the bass drums and I was getting more subsonics than bass. My chair was rockin' and I barely heard the drums. It's not a rocking chair. I'll say sorry to the neighbours later. Screw it, I'm moving.