Bi-Amping

Are the crossovers active???

Good grief.......

I missed this first time out.........

You have an 8" bass, 6.5" midbass, and a 3" dome midrange?

There is the clue why you don't like the sound. I won't even touch on the mish-mash of crossover points and slopes.

Go ahead......hate me.

After you get over hating me, seriously consider going active. I suspect that you will enjoy twidling with an active crossover. Much easier, and therefore more gratifying, than twiddling with caps and coils.

Cheaper in the long run, also.

I have built custom made crossovers, but they were all "twiddle-proof". It is too tempting to twiddle with them, and one can waste a lot of time twiddling and making things worse. Lots of fun, but not always a step in the right direction.

You can hate me.......it won't hurt my feelings! Some of my ex-coworkers will tell you that I made a career of getting people (mainly bosses) to hate me. Ah......the good ol' days.

Anyway.

Seriously, if you are going to try that many drivers, with that combo of crossovers, you MUST use some fancy measuring stuff to know that it is done right. In which case, you would know for certain what the problem is.

I'm not saying that multiple drivers, etc. won't work. I am saying that you can't guess what works and what doesn't. I think it is a safe guess that you do not presently have the gear to do such. Ergo, you don't know why you have a gain problem.

OK, back to your problem.

8 V out of a preamp is enough to melt any amp. Most amps have 26 dB of gain. A few dB either side, maybe.

As for drive, it should be able to drive 2 amps. Most amps are at least 10K input Z. That is not likely to be the problem. 5k is not that hard of a load to drive, which is probably a safe guess for worst case. A mismatch in gain more likely is.

As for your setup............you may want to try 4th order Linkwitz-Riley. That many drivers, with crossover points so close together, can be a nightmare. Not only do you have to take into account the phase of the crossover, but also that of the drivers. Heh, heh.....

One of my famous audio designer buddies had a very expensive multiple driver systen, made by a very well-known designer. I showed him how it had a nasty comb filter effect, depending on whether you were a short guy like me sitting down, or a really tall guy like him standing up. And everything in between.

He very quietly put them up for sale 2 weeks later.

This one makes no sense:

"Input resistance / capacitance: 1V"

Check that one, and let us know...........

The one about "dynamic power" is just marketing nonsense, written to impress you. The idea is that the peak power, at the top of the waveform, is calculated to be such-and-such watts. In the real world, it is a useless figure.

The one about head room is more revealing. That tells me it probably has a smallish power supply, and that the rail voltage will sag a great deal under a constant load. Problem is, they give one figure for all 3 impedance levels, and that can't be right. I bet it is a lot less than 7 dB @ 8 ohms. At least I would hope so.

So much for believing specs.

That sounds better. Any preamp should be able to drive 2 of those (or most anything) in parallel.

As for specs.........

Most are not to be taken seriously. Does not matter who wrote them, or for what gear. I'm sure you told us what they claim the specs are. Doesn't mean they are correct.

Back to headroom..........

If that figure is for 8 ohms, then the supply is too small. If it is for 2 ohms, then probably not. But they don't really say, do they? In which case, it is a meaningless number.