Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Bi-amping M60s

OK, I've decided on M60s and thanks to those here who helped me make that decision.

I'm looking at the new Denon AVR 2308 @ 100w per. It offers "back surround speaker channels re-assignable for bi-amping front left and right speakers" and the M60s can be bi-amped.

Does anyone here have experience with this on other receivers, and what are the pros/cons?

Thanks in advance.

New, the first con is that back surround speakers couldn't be used, but you're not planning on that now anyway. Another would be the rather minor point of more clutter and expense for the extra speaker wire without any benefit.

There are no significant pros involved, since this isn't "biamping" in a real sense. The one power supply section of the receiver is simply funneling the same limited amount of power to the speaker through two sets of power transistors(one previously inactive)rather than one. The transistors act as valves to deliver the required amount of power from the power supply section at each moment, but have no power of their own to lend. There's no "doubling" of available power, as is sometimes thought by those unfamiliar with the process, and no increase at all in available power can result.

Newland, I would not worry about trying to biamp your 60's, there would be no noticable performance increase, at least the way your thinking. It is my understanding to truely bi-amp speakers, you have to use an external crossover unit and de-activate the passive crossovers within the speakers.

I guarantee that you will be totally satisfied just using decent gauge wire and hook the 60's up normally to the l/r terminals.

At one point I owned an Emotiva 7 channel MPS-1 amp. I was having problems with the amp shutting down my m80's. So the Emotiva guy tried to talk me into removing the gold clip on the back of my 80's and use one amp to drive the woofers, and the other amp to drive highs. He said this would be like doubling the power. There was no difference, and the amp still shut down, so now I'm using Odyssey amps.

The point is that the speaker crossovers were still only allocating the same amount of power to each section as if I would have had it hooked up regularly, so I was not doubling my power using this method.

I can't find the AVR2308 anywhere on Denon's US and Canadian sites. I even looked in the discontinued products archive.

I did however find the manual for the 2307CI. This amp is rated at 100W per channel. Page 58 describes a selection within the amp's menu for assigning the rear speakers as surround back/zone2/bi-amp. It's pretty clear to me from the manual that when you select "bi-amp", each front channel will now have 100+100=200W available.

With this 200W, 100W would be available for the M60's woofers and 100W for the midrange/tweeter. Am I mis-interpreting something?

Quote:

---

I was having problems with the amp shutting down my m80's.

---

You have that a bit backwards Randy; the M80s were shutting down the amp. There would not be 200 watts for the M60s biamping in this fashion. It doesn’t matter if you have the binding post straps in place to deliver the power or a separate amp it is still only 100 watts per.

Denon 2308 Crutchfield

Thanks John.

FWIW, here is the response I got from Crutchfield (only one to have the 2308 on their website, not even Denon yet):

Bi-amping allows you to use two separate channels of amplification on one speaker cabinet. One channel of audio delivers the high frequency information and the other channel delivers the low frequency information. The benefits you can expect are better audio accuracy and, more vibrant sound filling out a perceived larger sound stage.

I'm not necessarily expecting 'more power' as the Denon/M60 combo will provide plenty for my environment. Was mostly curious what benefit, if any, since both Denon and Axiom listed bi-amping as a feature.

Thanks sir. Was mostly curious if this provided any specific benefit. See above post for reply I got from Crutchfield...FYI.

The Crutchfield representative apparently isn't well-informed on this particular subject. Unless he used "expect" because he knew that only expectations rather than realizations are possible, he's mistaken in describing the benefits listed.

Here is a good read on the subject.

http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/biamping.html