Bi-amping? or maybe not... (1 Viewer)

[Chris Soto]

I'm going to be getting brand new speakers pretty soon for my HT pretty soon. my two front right and left are going to be Polk's RTi8's. I had read a thread about how connecting an amp to them improved the sound. I'm want to try it out. Now I don't think it was a preamp he used because wouldn't that have to be an amp that powered the signal before it go the my reciever? or if it's like a car stereo amp. but then i thought that maybe that's not a good idea because you can't go from the posts on the back of the reciever to another amp. Also maybe you send the signal straight from the source to the car stereo type amp. but then that wouldn't allow the reciever to decode any signals if it needed to. I checked out the primer on biamping and i got more confused. TIA.

 

[John Garcia]

Using an external amp requires a receiver that has preamp outputs to send decoded analog signal to the external amps to amplify. You are right, you cannot send an undecoded signal directly to the amps. A preamp manages volume and decoding and is required before the amp.

Biamping requires separate amps for each driver, or rather pair of terminals on the speaker (high/low freq.). So, that means TWO amp channels per speaker. The improvements can be mixed, and results will vary depending on the speakers and the amps.

If you NEED more power, just using a decent external amp will yeild a very noticable difference. That means, if your speakers require more current than your receiver can provide, an amp should be an improvement. Going from that to biamping may not yeild a huge improvement, especially if the speakers don't need all the current available.

 

[Ted Lee]

this article may also help....

http://www.soundstage.com/synergize/synergize031998.htm