Am i now wasting a power amp?

[matengawhat]

I used to have a pair of MA RS8s which i biamped with a pair of Arcam P35s - i recently swapped my speakers for a pair on non bi-wireable speakers so have set the two power amps up in a mono configuration using one amp for each speaker am i right in thinking that this is only a real benefit if you have biwireable speakers and use both the A+B speaker terminals for each channel? Would i be better just removing one of the power amps and connecting both speakers to the same amp?

 

[Anonymous]

Mono bloc'ing is a great system configuration and arguably better than biamping. What speakers have you got now?

 

[matengawhat]

i thought by changing the amps to mono blocks though it set the opposite channel to the one you are using to the other speaker output of the same channel - s rather than having an amp with left and right you now have an amp with either two left or two rights?

i have a pair of focal profile 908s - that i love in many ways but still think are a bit bass light

 

[Andrew Everard]

Given that the P35 can't be bridged to create a more powerful mono amplifier, then yes you are wasting a power amplifier now. Or rather one channel of each power amplifier.

 

[matengawhat]

thats what i thought in this case so for now i might as well strip one out and connect both to the same amp until i change my speakers again as want to buy another pair of bi wireable speakers so i can then biamp them in a mono configuration again.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Indeed.

 

[matengawhat]

cheers andrew

 

[daveh75]

erm, isn't the p35 2x100w, and 1x170w when in bridged mode! although it's a long time since i looked at the instructions so could be wrong

edit- ignore me, just had a butcher's at my insructions

 

[Tony_R]

I would have thought that overall performance would be improved by using only one channel of each amplifier, as you're reducing the burden on the power supply, by only driving a single channel at a time.

This of course, assumes that these amps don't have dual power supplies (i.e. one for each channel..!).

Tony.

 

[Andrew Everard]

daveh75:edit- ignore me, just had a butcher's at my insructions

Could've sworn I heard something. Oh well, must have been mistaken...