Benchmark AHB2 - To 'mono' or not to 'mono'

@tobes - I find that I tend to stop following discussions after the trolls find them and do what they do. I'd rather politely ignore them than provide them with the attention they so obviously lack and need. I don't know all of the names yet, but they do tend to self-identify fairly quickly and in a pretty pathetic way.

@tobes - Regarding your former post, it is true that I don't know how much I need the extra power. I have a 14'x20' listening room to which I've been gradually applying acoustic treatments to get rid of slap echo and eliminate standing waves (with some professional advice). I have found that treating the direct reflection points on the side walls and ceiling in the room has improved the system image drastically, but also allows me to play my system more loudly and to gain a better appreciation of the dynamics in a recording, and now those dynamics are present everywhere there is image, not just tending towards the center (if that makes any sense at all) - as was the case before I started treating this room. I was thinking that the extra power would improve almost everything about this, particularly in more dynamic recordings.

So far it sounds as if those who've actually used a pair of AHB2s in bridged-mono mode have no regrets....

(with the addition of a 3/4 ohm series resistor in the primary) which means they will drive anything.

You have successfully just made the damping factor that was already diminished because of bridging, even worse by installing even more series resistance, good work.

I was thinking that the extra power would improve almost everything about this, particularly in more dynamic recordings.

If you don’t use all the dynamic headroom power with a single stereo amp, you will gain nothing by bridging having even more. Headroom is head room, if you haven’t reached it there’s no reason to make it higher by bridging and taking a hit on everything else.

You just take that was a good stereo amp, send it down the path of becoming a mono P.A. amp because of the reduction in all the other parameters it will take a hit on by bridging.

You guys need to see the forest for the trees, if you want/need more power and want to have two of these stereo amps, just vertically bi-amp them, then you gain the power in the bass and dynamic headroom, without taking a hit on everything else if you bridge them.
http://www.av2day.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/biamp2.jpg

Cheers George

talk to Benchmark, then borrow one and find out which you prefer...real listening in your own system, not theoretically why you should or shouldn't...