Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions For biamping M60s, crossover need to be removed?

Yes. Also, they're called active, because they require power of their own.

There are also digital crossovers which are done along with the signal processing. That's what I'm studying right now.

Erik, yes, true bi-amping(which has some modest benefits)is complex and is almost never done for home setups. Basically, it requires separate amplifiers(receivers have only one amplifier with several output channels)and an external crossover(usually electronic)before the amplifiers so that each amplifier gets only the desired frequency range to amplify. So yes, the internal speaker crossover has to be removed or at least by-passed to get rid of its inefficiencies.

The pseudo-bi-amping that some receiver manufacturers promote as a feature is meaningless, and no more "juice" is sent to the speaker by simply connecting the same single power supply section in the receiver to the speaker through two sets of output transistors(which have no power of their own and simply act as valves)rather than one.

Thats unbelievable John, I feel like almost the whole audio market is full of gimmicks and scams. Why do they even offer these options, in all honesty, is it for products to look more enticing? And why do our speakers and most others have 2 pairs of binding posts then if the majority never truly biamp? I enjoy my sound now, but I figured I would try it as not to waste a potentially helpful feature. I also like asking these questions on here because you guys are full of knowledge, and even if I never do any of these tweeks it helps satisfy my idle curiosity (electronics is very intersting stuff). In the end it all comes down to the quote in JohnK's signiture, how true!

Dealers. Dealers require a lot of these things so they can sell the speakers and more gizmos.

Also, people will buy it.

There are a lot of folks who buy into stuff like this. I have a brother in law that has an inexpensive set of Polk towers that is powered by an Onkyo and he uses the bi-amp feature and swears he hears a difference. Try and tell him there's no difference in sound; he'll argue that fact there is a difference.

I wonder if Axiom would build an M80/VP180 with three pairs of binding posts, and easily bypassed crossovers (well at least able to be bypassed by removing a speaker and moving spades from the crossover output directly to the inside binding posts).

Then they could be advertised as tri-ampable, and actually be used that way by someone who knows that they are doing.

The power of the placebo effect. Thats a cool and seemingly simple idea Neon

Hi Club Neon and all,

I think that is extremely unlikely, seeing as how both Ian, the founder and owner of Axiom, and myself believe that there is no advantage to bi-/tri-amping in domestic setups.

Moreover, it then puts the spectral balance (tonal balance) of the speaker into the hands of the consumer, and we do not want that to occur. We spend a lot of time and research doing double-blind tests to get the tonal balance excactly right--you all love the new VP180, right? It's taken years for us to get a big center that I'm satisfied with, in fact, thrilled with.

Likewise, the new M60 v3 is a big improvement over the v2, especially if you're a really critical listener to male and female vocals and dislike slightly edgy brasses, etc.

Why would Ian and I want to put the subtle nuances of tonal balance and crossover adjustment into the hands of consumers?

No way.

Regards,
Alan

Very good point. Thanks for your response.

+1