Is Bi - amping worth the trouble?

Blindjim, I have the VR5 SE's and just finishid biamping them, I have a Vac Phi 110 driving the tops and a Spectron Musician III driving the bottoms. Was it worth it? Absolutely! I love the Vac amp but it just didn't have the bottom end I wanted.I bought the Spectron and tried it by itself with the 5's "great bass" but it couldn't touch the Vac in the mids and high's. One thing I noticed when running them seperate was that the Vac played a lot louder at the same volume setting, later checking gain I found the Vac to be about 10db louder.I put a pair of Rothwell 10db attenuators between the pre and the Vac and that seemed to solve the problem. Maybe I was lucky but I found no other problems and the system never sounded even close to what I have now.

The Vac will be louder cause you eliminated all that loss in crossover on the lows, and the fact you are not driving lows with it now at all, but the crossover itself was probably soaking up 50% plus of the power in the amps power supply, so its got a lot more headroom in reserve. Yeah biamping if done right with good speakers and amps can definatly have advantage's.

Why not put all the money In a ecxellent stereo amplifier, instead of several lesser units with signal degrading from external crossover units.

Mfontana
Good to hear. those 5's are way more sensitive than the 4JR's though, aren't they? that following post makes sense too... eliminating some path and resultant obstacles should have provided for more gain... I'll keep those rothwell attenuators in mind too.

Hiend2
that's a good question. Actually i'd like to have an idea of just how much a signal is degraded period. by anything... and just how much can a signal be degraded before it is audible? ...and are we sure that a signal is being degraded, in the first place? or is only X overs the culprit for signal degredation?

Personally, i think otherwise. if this tact has worth... the signal begins at a source. let's say a digital source. let's say the signal is at it's best after all the D/A conversion is done... that's the output terminals. then would cables play a part in signal degredation too? oK, how much?

I hear that term bandied about frequently. From personal experience, in cable applications, everytime a connection is employed in the signal path a resultant loss of approximately 3db occurrs. Depending upon the initial signal level, 3 db isn't much at all. minimally in regular setups, given the above... 12 to 18db loss is occurring. Now if there is loss, then isn't the signal being degraded? Loss equates to degredation. Distortion, now, there is perhaps a more apt term. i believe many confuse the one with the other... and use them interchangeably. then it would stand to reason a one piece unit without additional peripherals and connections 'should' (if comparably build quality is incorporated), be best. integrated units should take the lead... I think 'separates' are in that position, however.

All in all, there is no such thing as a perfect system or plan, if humans are involved. As to the above poster, 'perfectionist', I too am a perfectionist... with a poor track record... so I gave up on that path and decided to be extremely good, and most often, 'just above average', I can live with that quite easily. there is more time for listening, and enjoyment, and oh, yeah, there's that 'fun' aspect of it all too.

Perfectionist: Given the fact that you're using mono-blocks, you wouldn't be vertically or horizontally bi-amping. You would simply be bi-amping with mono-blocks.

Blindjim: How did you arrive at the figure of 3 dB? At radio frequencies, every connection added is a supposed .5 dB loss according to common teachings. In my experience, a good connection doesn't lose anywhere near that much. At audio frequencies, i'm quite certain that the loss is noticeably less.

Having said that, connection losses may not be linear in amplitude as frequency is varied. On top of that, other distortions may occur as a result of added connections. Obviously, the quality of connection will have a lot to do with how much loss is involved. The greater the variances between terminating impedances, the greater the loss and potential for increased distortion. Needless to say, part of "cable swapping" is a combo of all of the above, which partially explains some of the variable results we achieve in different systems.

I've often contemplated what would happen if one were to take a distortion analyzer and measure an entire system from source input cabling to speaker output cabling. After baselining the system as one normally runs it, one could then swap individual cables and re-run the same tests. I think that the comparative results would be very interesting to say the least. It would also be interesting to see how the system as it was would sound compared to the system as it measured lowest in distortion.

Obviously, one could conduct such testing component by component, swapping cables until the lowest distortion was achieved. From there, the next component and cable could be installed, taking the same approach. One could repeat this until the entire system had been pieced together using this approach.

Using this method, the cables would be acting as impedance matching transmission lines. Each cable would be fine tuned for the specific electrical interaction between the mating components that they joined together.

There's a LOT to think about on stuff like this. Quite honestly, i'm surprised that nobody has done anything like this and / or published research on this subject. Then again, most AF engineers don't think about cabling acting as a "transmission line". Could be why the subject has never been looked into that thoroughly.

Other than that, there are great sonic advantages to be had going "direct drive" i.e. no caps, resistors, inductors between the amp and speaker. Most of the guys messing with "full range" drivers know and realize this, but most of the "audiophile world" are clueless in this specific area. Sean
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