please help me with vertical bi amping

[ian1978]

hi everyone, im in need of some help, ive never bi amped before, ive chosen to use one power amp per speaker, i have B&W 804's and a Plinius M8 pre amp with 2 Plinius P10 power amps, the pre amp has 2 sets of RCA outputs, my question is how do i wire the amps correctly to each other and how do i wire the speakers to the amps? ...... please feel free to speak to me like im dumb lol i really want to get this right, i would like to thank everyone for taking the time to read this and i hope someone can find the time to explain this to me, thankyou

 

[RobinKidderminster]

I assume your speakers are bi-wire. Sorry can't help beyond that :-(

 

[Roger_A]

hi everyone, im in need of some help, ive never bi amped before, ive chosen to use one power amp per speaker, i have B&W 804's and a Plinius M8 pre amp with 2 Plinius P10 power amps, the pre amp has 2 sets of RCA outputs, my question is how do i wire the amps correctly to each other and how do i wire the speakers to the amps? ...... please feel free to speak to me like im dumb lol i really want to get this right, i would like to thank everyone for taking the time to read this and i hope someone can find the time to explain this to me, thankyou

As far as I can see you would need to use 'Y' connectors so you connect the left preamp out to both channel inputs on one of the power amps and then connect one channel of the power amp output to the tweeter terminals on the LH speaker and the other channel to the bass/mid terminals. Repeat for the right channel. If it's not too obvious, make sure the bridging connectors on the speakers are removed.

It seems a lot of trouble and expense for what may be a relatively small improvement. It would probably be cheaper to get active speakers and do the job properly with almost certainly better results.

Roger

 

[spiny norman]

hi everyone, im in need of some help, ive never bi amped before, ive chosen to use one power amp per speaker, i have B&W 804's and a Plinius M8 pre amp with 2 Plinius P10 power amps, the pre amp has 2 sets of RCA outputs, my question is how do i wire the amps correctly to each other and how do i wire the speakers to the amps?

OK, assuming you're using RCA cables since those are the ones you mention...

With all the amps off, remove the jumpers between the two sets of terminals on the speakers, and connect one set of wires from the HF terminal on the left speaker to the left channel output on one of the power amps, and the second set from the left speaker LF terminals to the right channel output on the same amp.

Repeat for the right speaker and the other amp.

Now connect a pair of cables from the two left channel preouts on the preamp to the left and right imputs on the amp connected to the left speaker, and repeat for the right speaker.

If you want to save running two sets of interconnects for each channel from preamp to each power amp, you could use just a single run of cable for each (as you probably are now), and a splitter like this

at the amplifier end, to connect the single run of cable to both inputs on the power amp.

Job done.

If you're using balanced interconnects, you'll definitely have to use splitter cables, as the M8 only has one set of XLR outputs: you'll need one to divide the signal from the left channel output on the preout to both of the inputs on the amp connected to the left speaker, the other to do the same for the right channel. To cut down on cabling costs, use a single run of cable from the preamp preout to the location of the power amplifier, then a splitter to connect the power amp end of the cable to both inputs on the amp.

You need 'XLR female to two XLR male' splitters, like this

– and as with the RCA splitter, the female end (on the right of the picture) goes on the end of the cable from your preamp, while the two male plugs go into the two inputs on the power amp.

Depending on how you have the amplifiers set up, I'd consider going down the XLR balanced route, and using long interconnects, with the amp for each speaker placed close to the speaker it's feeding and connected to it with short lengths of speaker cable.