What do you gain from bi-amping Magnepan 1.6s or

Thanks guys.

Sufintanil - thanks, this is some very basic info but very enlightening to me as a beginner. I would have thought using 2 amps on each speaker would have more appropriately been called "quad amping"

Roxy54 - Yes, you are probably right but it surprises me that people can justify going to all that added expense for what seems to be not a great increase in sound quality. Then again, maybe there is a great increase.

Some info on the subject: (http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm)

Having recently tried bi-amping for the first time, with excellent results I must say, I'll take a crack at this.
Although the link Rodman provides is excellent, it is a lot of reading. So here's a beginners explanation. Bi-amping provides one amplifier channel per set of terminals on your speakers. The 1.6 has terminals for high and low frequencies so bi-amping them requires 4 channels of amplification. You could use 4 monoblocs, 2 stereo amps or a single 4 channel amp to get one channel per speaker driver.
Also, you would need to split the output from your preamp to provide an input to each of the channels. In my case, the amps (PS Audio) have a switch on the back to route the input to both channels. Some amps have a line input and output to provide chaining the amps together for bi-amping. Linn and Musical Fidelity are two that come to mind.
I won't address inserting filters as I did not do it that way. I ran each amp full range and let the speakers crossover provide the filtering. Just to be clear on that, your speakers provide filtering (crossover) to ensure only the desired frequencies reach each driver. The crossover is basically 2 filters that keep the drivers from reproducing frequencies they are not intended to produce.
I hope this helps.

You have to match all the amplifiers gain. if the other amp have higher gain than the other amp you will have balance problem, either you're vertical or horizontal bi-amping.

Timrhu - Thanks for saving me the reading in the link which I am sure would have confused me, though i do appreciate Rodman sending me the link. Your response perfectly answers the question for me. OK, here is another question - do you guys find a BIG improvement when bi-amping? Now, if so, what if I were to use 2 monoblocks total, one for each speaker - would I gain anything more than power than I would using a powerful stereo amp (Pass Labs 250.5).

After moving my system from room to room and battling room treatments in every room over the last couple of weeks I finally have my system sounding good enough to give me goose-pimples and I am sure I can get it better. I am going to be a wimp and try bi-wiring first.....do you guys think this makes much of a difference? One problem I see is I am using an attenuator to shave off the sharp highs on my Maggie 1.6s and the jumpers from these go into where the bi-wire cables go - how do I do this?

Thanks to everybody so far for your help - much appreciated.