However, using this same example but with active crossover or passive before the amps, those two 100w amps would be roughly equivalent of a single 400w amp. In your example of using the AR9 with 200Hz x-over, two (for example) 100w amps really add little more power to the system because the maximum power to either section is limited by the voltage rails of the amp - one clips, both clip. Thus, the amps for both mid/high or lows can be smaller since they have less proportion of the signal to amplify. When you are doing "real" bi amping, that is to say with crossovers before the amplifiers, the amps need only to reproduce the voltage swing of the portion of the audio spectrum they are amplifying. However, I disagree on the amp/power aspect. This is because of the average power distribution of music. You need to try the speakers assuming both "in" and "out" of phase to see which sounds the best.Ĭlick to expand.I agree on one part and that's that the mids/highs require less power than the bass. Your amps might be 180 degrees out of phase with each other. I then balance each source of music to suit my ears. I passive bi-amp my AR-3a's and I don't worry about amp balance as I have volume controls on each amp. The challenge you face in passive bi-amping is matching the output from the two different amps. The woofers are very power hungry and separating their current demand from the other drivers, can only improve the resulting sound.ĪR recommends amps of "similar size", but I think, Wank, you are plenty close enough. If you remove everything, you'll end up with an impedance of less than 2 ohms.įor these specific speakers the notion of passive bi-amping makes a great deal of sense. It's doing a ton of impedance matching and impedance smoothing.
It's doing more than simple frequency selection. You must keep the woofer inductor network intact.
They were never intended to be run under active operation. Forget about active bi-amping on these AR-9's.