Pseudo active bi-amping with AV receiver and stereo integrated amp

[arrabon]

Hi everyone,

At the moment I have a pair of refurbished/upgraded Mordaunt-Short MS25i's as the fronts of a 7.1 setup with a Marantz SR5003. I also have an old Audiolab 8000A stereo amp that's currently not being used.

I've recently been reading about the advantages of active bi-amping over other forms of bi-amping/wiring which supposedly yield little to no improvement to sound quality. Not wanting to head into the world of full blown active bi-amping, I had this idea:

Set the Audiolab's volume knob to a constant level and connect it via the SR5003's pre-outs. Have the Marantz drive the mid/bass drivers, and the Audiolab drive the tweeters, using the tone controls to roll off the bass.

Was wondering what people's thoughts are, is this something others have tried before? Is it safe? Will volume control be proportionate?

 

[bluedroog]

The cons outweigh the pros for me but you'll only know for sure by trying. Not something I'd do myself, either pre out and drive the with your 2 channel amp or leave as is.

 

[Ben K.]

Agree with bluedroog.

I would personally use just the audiolab via pre outs to run the front channels

 

[tomlinscote]

If the stereo amp has pre in (or an AV) setting it could work but it will sound odd unless the 2 power amp stages are of equal gain. I have used a Roksan Kandy power amp to bi-amp the fronts in my set-up but only because it has trimmers so you can match the gain of the AV amp's power section.

Tommo

 

[The_Lhc]

Hi everyone,

At the moment I have a pair of refurbished/upgraded Mordaunt-Short MS25i's as the fronts of a 7.1 setup with a Marantz SR5003. I also have an old Audiolab 8000A stereo amp that's currently not being used.

I've recently been reading about the advantages of active bi-amping over other forms of bi-amping/wiring which supposedly yield little to no improvement to sound quality. Not wanting to head into the world of full blown active bi-amping, I had this idea:

Set the Audiolab's volume knob to a constant level and connect it via the SR5003's pre-outs. Have the Marantz drive the mid/bass drivers, and the Audiolab drive the tweeters, using the tone controls to roll off the bass.

Was wondering what people's thoughts are, is this something others have tried before? Is it safe? Will volume control be proportionate?

That's not really active bi-amping as you're still sending a full range signal to each set of drivers and relying on the internal crossover sections (now split) to filter out the unwanted frequencies. An active setup requires the crossovers to be BEFORE the amplifier stage, not after as they would be in this setup.

You may also run into issues with the gain of each amp not being the same (and therefore not getting the same volume level from each half of the speakers), although you could adjust this with the stereo amp's volume control obviously, but it'd need careful checking and making sure you set the stereo amp volume to exactly the same level everytime.