Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater bi-amping with your receiver

Hello All,

In my quest for a new receiver I have been downloading various owner's manuals just to read up a bit more on the receivers I've been looking at. I noticed with the Pioneer Elite models you can actually set them up to bi-amp your main speakers (if you have a 5.1 or smaller system). Looks like you have to configure it in the menu that way and then simply following the directions for wiring up your main speakers.

Anyone out there try this? If so did you notice any difference in sound?

If I am understanding this correctly you would be in essence giving yourself 200 wpc to your fronts instead of 100 wpc. This seems like a pretty neat feature, especially for someone like me who is much more of a stero/music listener and doesn't have any plans to go beyond a 5.1 system.

I also noticed in the Yamaha 2400 receiver you can use the A/B selector switch/connections to bi-wire your speakers. Anyone out there trying this? I would think this wouldn't provide as potentially dramatic results...but it still strikes me as a very thoughtful feature. If nothing else you could double the gauge of speaker cable you use which I found never really hurts.

I have the 2400 and have it bi-wired to my 60's and it sounds great. The only problem being that I didn't listen to it without being bi-wired so I can't really compare what the differences would be.
I'm no expert but if I understand correctly bi-wiring splits the signal so that your mids and tweeters are fed by one connection and the subs are fed by another. I think it's supposed to result in a cleaner sound.
I haven't listened to a lot of recievers but I know I love my 2400.

about that bi-wiring (which is very different from bi-amping), have you checked out this lengthy thread? Most of us here are very dubious about the benefits of biwiring and believe you'd be better off simply using a single thicker cable.

Also, I believe that it would be a really, really bad idea to "bi-wire" your speakers using A+B. I've been wrong before, but I think that would put them in series, which would present a very, very high load for your amp.

don't you mean bi-amp?

Either way, it's bad. A&B don't feed from different amps, as I understand it. I remember something about this from Alan before, but now it's not making as much sense to me...

I don't have any issues with my A-B biwire and my reciever. I know that Yamaha specifically states that the A-B connections can be used for biwiring. I would be surprised that they would recommend it if it was bad for the reciever, but then again I'm pretty new to all of this. Hopefully my speakers and reciever won't disappear in a cloud of smoke

Grif, using the A and B terminals on your 2400 in a bi-wire arrangement can't possibly result in any damage, but it also doesn't bring any unique benefit. In some cases using A and B to drive two separate speaker systems simultaneously can result in some impedance problems(the Canadian models don't even permit it), but when just one speaker is connected nothing significantly different electrically is happening with the two wires except that two wires have lower combined resistance(e.g. two 16ga biwires are equal to a single 13ga wire). The signals in the two wires are both full-range and no separation of frequencies takes place until this happens in the speaker crossover, just as it would with a single wire. Due to the added inconvenience and expense of two wires, it makes more sense to use one wire of adequate gauge.