Bruce, WOW, I would like to see that Radio Shack meter...or maybe I should get one......
You saw my bi-aming with mono amps on my system. What would you term "vertically" bi-amping from mono blocks? In a way I am just running off of 2 pairs of outputs: ....
If we ever do this again, what type of music do you want to hear
Thanks again for the music evening.
John,
I think, from your comment above, you still have some confusion about bi-amping. Let me take a step back here. (this has turned out to be a long post for those who do not care to read on)
In the golden days of audio some audiophiles would have tri-amped systems. Three way systems were common to optimize the driver size to the frequency response. In order to accomplish this “tri-amped” system one would need an active electronic three way crossover (which was inserted between the preamp and the amps, there were no crossovers at the speaker), three STEREO amps and enough interconnects and speaker wire.
Usually, a rather small (1 to 30 watts) tube amp was used for the tweeters (because tubes were certainly sweeter back then and one does not need much power for the tweeters in a three-way speaker). From the crossover a set of speakers wires would come from the left channel of the “tweeter” stereo amp to the tweeter on the left and a set of speaker wires would come from the right channel of the amp to the right tweeter. These wires would only be carrying the high frequency that the electronic three-way crossover had split off from the full range signal.
In the mid range a somewhat larger stereo tube amp was usually used. For the woofers a much larger solid state (transistors were used because they could be built to produce a lot more “power” and have a greater damping factor for woofer control) amp did the job. Sometimes they would use solid state mono blocks on the woofers. And very occasionally all amps would be mono blocks.
Now to accomplish the above with stereo amps one needs THREE stereo amps. To accomplish the above with all mono blocks one needs SIX amps, one for each driver.
To simplify things, lets now talk about a two-way system (which our ML just happen to be). Most speakers use passive crossovers. And most just have one pair of binding post to connect the speaker wire to. The original Aerius had a single pair of binding post. I believe with the Aerius i (or some such nomenclature) they went to two sets of binding post, so one could bi-wire. Now to bi-wire one much physically separate (electrically disconnect) the crossover section to the tweeter/mid-range (stats in our case) and the woofer section. That is why your Odyssey and my Prodigy come with jumpers for those who do not wish to bi-wire. They need to physically reconnect the two crossover sections.
The fact that there are two sets of binding post on the back of our MLs does not make each speaker into two full range speakers. We still have just one full range speaker on each side. Without the jumper, connecting up to one set of binding post would just give you the stats or the woofers.
“Vertically” bi-amping or “horizontally” bi-amping are terms that would be applied to STEREO amps ONLY. Vertically bi-amping requires two identical amps. Horizontally bi-amping does not. If one had bi-amped a two-way system with mono blocks one would need FOUR mono blocks. Each mono block would of course have its own power supply. To bi-amp vertically one would use a stereo amp. One channel would be used for the tweeter/mid and the other for the woofer. There would be one power supply shared by both channels (unless the stereo amp was dual mono construction with two power supplies, which is not very common in stereo amps so we won’t consider that case). So the term “vertically” bi-amped specifically applies to a stereo amp. This could be accomplished actively, with an external electronic crossover that would be inserted between the preamp and the stereo amp, or it could be accomplish passively, as I do, allowing the full range signal to go through each channel of the amp and having the passive crossover within the speaker to either roll off the highs or filter out the bass.
Now some companies that build stereo amps also build mono blocks in the same chassis. Often times they take the stereo lay out and make a few changes to the circuit, but use the same power supply and output devices. This essentially doubles that power supply for each side(because you now have two chastises), decouples any interaction between the left and right channel power supplies and usually doubles the output devices, resulting in two to four times the power from the mono block that one would have had available from one channel of their stereo amp.
These mono blocks do not have two RCA or balance inputs, for left and right, as a stereo amp would. But sometimes they have two sets of binding posts. Since their stereo model had two sets of binding post they keep the same physical layout. But these binding post are not from TWO separate amps, remember this IS a mono block. The two sets of binding post are connected in parallel. The two sets are there just to make it easy to bi-wire. It is easier to connect two sets of wires to two sets of post than it is to one set of posts.
John, you have MONO blocks with two sets of binding posts. Although you could connect one amp to tweeters on both sides and the other to the woofers on both sided, because each amp has a SINGLE input you would be sending one channel to both sides. In other words, you left channel could be coming out your woofers and your right channel could be coming out your stats.
Your system is optimally wired as it is. I hope this clears this up for you.
Oh, one more thing. Some stereo amps have a switch to switch them into a mono block. This is about the only time there would be more than one set of inputs on a mono block. The amp would be labeled or the instruction manual would indicate which of the two stereo inputs would be used for mono operation.
Looking forward to us getting together again.
Bruce
Where did you get those heat senses, the ones under the DAC that showed "Yellow" for cold and "Blue" for warm operation temp?
