Bi-amping question

I agree with Bob (and if he and I agree you know it's right...or the world is about to end).

Consider subwoofers. You don't necessarily need to high-pass your main speakers either. Adding subs will add lots of power and low frequency capability while subjectively improving the higher frequencies as well.

I would absolutely not biamp as you propose. The "bass" driver on the Sttafs is actually a mid-bass driver - a good deal of your mid-range is produced by it - which is exactly what you want tubes for, not a mid or low fi receiver. If you had a SS amp of comparable quality to your tube amp, then maybe, but I'd still think twice about that.

Bob's suggestion is right on. Get yourself a subwoofer. Even if it's a budget subwoofer it will help some. If you can spare more change, a really good subwoofer (like a Rel or one of Totem's) would be very much worth the investment.

When I had my Sttafs I used a cheap-o infinity SW for a while and it was really nice (and I was driving the Sttafs with 200 watts/ch). I then got a Rel Storm III and it was amazing.

Further, my limited experience with Tubes on top, and SS on the bass was disappointing. It was very hard to tune in 2 amps, and I never did find the resulte satisfactory. I ended up giving up on the idea.

A few quick thoughts on biamping. I'm running an actively biamped Linn system, which is intended to be upgraded in this way.

Passive biamping, especially if you're using a tube amp, will certainly beef up the bass. Whether this is an "improvement" or not will depend on a number of things. One is quality of the amps. In your case, I don't think that a receiver will do much for you. One good amp is better than two poor amps, or one good amp hampered by a second poor amp. Unless you make a significant jump in amp quality, you're probably better off using one amp and adding a sub like the other posters suggest.

On the other hand, active biamping, where you replace the speaker crossover with an electronic crossover, and then use two amps, is a huge improvement. That's not what you're proposing however. You can do this with: two amps, an electronic crossover, and with or without a sub; or with one amp and a sub using an active crossover. The latter is what Bob is suggesting. That's probably the best way to go with your Totems, although in my view the former is far better if you have a system designed to be upgraded in this way.

As far as using tubes on top and SS on the bottom, a lot of people do this. For some it works, for others it doesn't. I've never tried it.

When you biamp, the amps do not have to be the same. However, they do have to have the same "gain". Otherwise the balance between the tweeters and mid/woofer will be thrown off. Whatever is being run by the amp with the higher gain will be "louder" than the cone being driven by the amp with the lower gain. This can certainly damage the tweeters if it's the less loud one and you crank up the volume trying to restore the volume balance.

Question: How critical is the crossover in the loop between the amp and the Staffs versus just running separate lines directly to the sub and the speakers? My experience without one has been that a smaller amp will start to clip and the mid bass drivers on small bookshelf speakers will start to go all wobbly with bass rich material at higher volumes, while the powered sub just plows ahead undeterred. I have also heard that putting a less than high quality crossover in the path can defeat the purpose of having a speaker like the Staff which has carefully matched crossovers and drivers. Other's experience on this appreciated. Also, which subs quality built-in crossovers to deal with high level inputs and outputs to speakers?

Agree with all posts here, I have always thought that you would have volume and tone matching problems if you used different amps or types of amplification to bi-amp a single speaker system. This has been my experience building custom sound systems for automobiles.