Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Bi-amping and M22ti

This is maybe silly question but what is bi-amping and is M22ti bi-amping compatible?

Bi-amping generally means using separate amplifiers for your mids/highs and your woofers. This is done with "high-end" speakers and you will find this capability with some of the larger Axiom offerings. The reasons for this that I have seen are many. Some audiophile types like to power the highs and lows with different amplifiers, claiming to match the characteristics of each with the perfect amp. Some claim that the internal crossovers in speakers are inherently inferior to outboard crossover networks. Some do it because it is expensive and as far as they know $=Quality. The M22's cannot be bi-amped, at least not "off-the-shelf" so to speak. Bi-wiring means running separate wires from the same amplifier to the high and low's individual binding posts. I really don't know what the benefit of this may be.

As BlueStater correctly stated, the M22s (or any of Axiom's bookshelf speakers) cannot be bi-amped or bi-wired.

First, I think it is important for me to mention that there are two types of bi-amping: passive bi-amping and active bi-amping.

Passive bi-amping refers to running two amplifier channels in parallel without an external crossover. For this, you leave the internal speaker passive crossovers intact. This offers the benefit of increasing total power, but basically nothing that will significantly affect the sound quality. (This is what I do with my M60s. I do this instead of active bi-amping because I do not want to mess with the internal crossovers, and they sound great to my ears just the way they are. I also value having a warranty. )

Active bi-amping refers to using an external electronic crossover before the power amplifiers (but after the pre-amplifier) to separate the signal into a low component and a high component based on the crossover frequencies you select. To do this, however, you must open up your speakers and disable the internal passive crossover network. This will not only improve the power output by simply adding up the total power, but it will increase sound quality for a few reasons.

One reason that active bi-amping improves the audio quality is that an electronic crossover is generally going to be of higher quality than a passive crossover. These will have higher slopes and thus will allow you to more precisely specify which frequencies will go to what drivers.

Another benefit of active bi-amping is that it lowers the audibility of the distortion as a result of clipping. Distortion is most easily heard in the mid to high frequencies. Because treble requires much less power to get the same apparent loudness, you will most likely not even strain the treble amplifier even when the bass amplifier is clipping.

Yet another advantage results from what I just said above. Since clipping is prevented in the midrange and treble speakers, and because tweeters are the most easily damaged by clipping, you are basically ensuring that if they get damaged, it is not due to amplifier clipping.

I hope this was somewhat useful for you.

Thanks for the amplification and clarification! Any thought on bi-wiring?

Whoa, that poor stick fella ^ fell a long way on your reply DJ_...got any backups?

Biwiring? Waste of money. Here are my thoughts on it from a thread two years ago. (Wow, has it really been that long?)

I thought as much. I'm still working on fine-tuning my sh!t-filter as far as audio goes. What's the line from Apocalypse Now? "Out here the sh!t piles up so fast you need wings to stay above it?"

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Biwiring? Waste of money.

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Exactly. It is pointless... All it does is lower the resistance of the wire, but this can be achieved just as easily by using a lower gauge (thicker) wire.

Edit: Haha BrotherBob... My response was kind of long, so I guess I was a bit rough on my stick figure.

Thanks folks. I am sorry to hear that m22ti can not be done but what to do.

Now, you find that your passive bi-amped set up does sound better? Cleaner at high SPL? Better in general? I understand that this would put a lower load on each amp, therefore getting essentially more SPL with less strain on the amps and thus reducing the chance of clipping. But say at 88-100 DB does it actually sound better? I am just wondering.