2. amps-preamps
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Is Bi - amping worth the trouble?

Hello all...

I'm on the fence with the thought of bi amping. A big part of me wants to go ahead with it... the 'wallet' part says "Not so fast".

There should be lots of folks who've biamped speakers before... When it was all said and done, "Was it worth the time and expense?"

I'm inclinded to add a tube amp for the upper end of my VR4 JR's ... or any other speakers for that matter... though in any case and reardless the speakers, tube amp on top, and SS on the bottom.

...and then there's the thought of keeping two dissimilarly powered amps matched at the same volume level... and the added IC's, PC, and stand... it does seem to add up.

... and at this point, I'm thinking BAT to keep things all the same... and am not sure there, wether even that matters too much...

I sure do appreciate the input.
blindjim

Showing 2 responses by maineiac

maineiac
649 posts
 
I have been thinking about the same thing as I own VSA-4JRs and have run them with 200W SS and 80W tube amp. There are compromises with each of these. It is interesting that a couple of well respected speaker designs are essentially bi-amped, the Vandy 5A and Von Schweikert 99DB. I think that it could be worth it on the 4JRs.
maineiac
649 posts
 
What Jsadurni says seems to make sense to me with the 4JRS since the mid-high box and the bass box are independent. If you can adjust for gain differences you should be able to bring the drive of SS to the bass and the strengths of tubes to the mid-high. I guess I was thinking that the DB99 essentially did this with an independently amplified woofer (I am guessing it is crossed over on its own).

This is what the 4JR manual says:
BI-AMPING THE VR-4 SERIES: If the tightest bass is desired, use a solid state amplifier on the woofer modules. If you value “image float” and liquid-sounding midrange/treble response, use a tube amplifier on the M/T’s. You will not need an outboard crossover, since the crossovers in the speakers will still continue to work. Although it is true that louder output can be obtained by high-pass filtering the tube amp, the loss of transparency is usually not worth it, and the clean volume obtainable without a high-pass crossover will be usually satisfying for anyone but a metal head.
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