Well sure. I believe I am
passively Bi-amping. Many would argue that there is no benefit to doing it this way, but it's what I'm doing...
Each front channel pre-out is split from my AVR using a high quality RCA splitter, and then a pair of interconnects runs to the amp for each channel. My M80's are wired with Canare 4S11 cable, so it was easy enough to power each 'half' of each channel with one of the LPA's amps.
Do I notice a difference? That's tricky, but I think so.
Here's what I did. I
bi-amped my right M80, and left my left M80
bi-wired. I then set both speakers to Large, and shut my sub off (just to be sure). Then I played some music, shuffling the balance around to see if I noticed a difference. Now of course, there's one glaring variable here and that's if there's different levels mixed in each channel. But for my purposes, the tracks were close enough. For the record, I listened to many tracks from Norah Jones,
Come Away With Me via 2-channel SACD.
I prefered the bi-amped. For some reason it just felt like there was more bass response. At the same volume level, I seemed to be able to feel more bass being transmitted through the floor from the bi-amped one. I sort of thought that her voice was just a bit more clearer on the high, loud notes on the bi-amped M80.
Then, just for fun, I disconnected both single pre-outs from the back of my receiver, and dropped them behind my rats-nest of an AV rack. Walked away, had a glass of lemonade, and came back. I reached around and found the cables in the dim recesses behind my Av rack. Without looking to see which is which, I reconnected them to my AVR/PrePro, again,
not having any idea which channel was which. Yeah, I did it by feel.
I could not tell a difference in the high notes. I tried, and sometimes would like the left, and then change my mind. I *might* have though that the left sounded a bit better. But really, honestly, I couldn't pick out a difference in mid/high range. But my left speaker did seem to have just a touch more authority in the bass department. Not a lot, but enough that I could feel that it was vibrating my floor a bit more than the other. Sounded a bit 'fuller'. I 'voted' that the left speaker was now the bi-amped. Tracing my cables back, I was indeed correct. I had a 50/50 shot at getting it correct.
So I corrected the L/R cable, and bi-wired the other M80.
So there it is. Completely unscientific, probably somehow completely biased, but I like it this way. The only drawback is that my LPA seems to get a bit hotter than it used to. No problems with shutdown, but it's definitely warmer than it used to be at comparable volume levels.
So now, channels 1-4 are powering the fronts, 5 is the center, and the smaller 6+7 are powering my surrounds. No problems what-so-ever (there were a few reports of humming on the 6/7 channels when using all 7 channels of the LPA), and it all sounds fantastic, if I do say so myself.
