Is anybody running the M80's bi-amped with a Denon 3808, and bottom line- do they sound better bi-amped than conventionally? The reason I am asking is because I will be running wires for the fronts through the walls and I only want to do this once. I have been reading about bi-amping and it is reather confusing to me - (more whatts, same amplifier = no more watts, etc. sorry i am a newvie). The speakers have been ordered and I will be ordering the Denon soon so I can't due any testing of my own, but I am runnig all the wiring now and I want to make sure that I can get the most out of these speakers and the receiver. I will be running a 5.1 system.

Thanks all,

from what I have heard it is not worth your time/money to bi-amp the m80's

It's not worth your time or money to bi-amp any conventional speaker. You will hear no difference at all.

Don't worry about BUYamping, as this is not true bi-amping, more like bi-wiring.

Loud, disregard any suggestion in the Denon manual(or any other)that you can actually bi-amp with a receiver that only has one amp with one main power supply section in it. Making the suggested connection simply feeds the same amount of power through two sets of output transistors(one previously unused for back surrounds)rather than one. Available power isn't doubled or increased at all.

I think its wasted effort, out of curiosity I experimented with bi-amping speakers from my reciever and I couldn't hear any difference.

You can indeed connect multiple channels on the 3808 to one pair of speakers. I believe that you can actually connect as many as three channels to the fronts for example by configuring all channels as fronts in the menu.

Randy is correct that this doesn't buy anyone anything but the technical explanation is not correct. The receiver, when connected this way, is actually able to provide more power into a single channel. The problem is that the majority of speakers simply cannot use this power (including the 80s).

The reason for this is because the maximum voltage of each amplifier cannot be exceeded (ie. fire and smoke). Since all channels are connected in parallel, your receiver's power supply can indeed dump three times the current into each channel but the rail voltage of each channel is not permitted to exceed its rated value. You'd have to find a very, very low impedance speaker to take advantage of the extra current. Having the current doesn't do any good if your amplifier channels experience voltage collapse.

The best explanation I can offer as to why this is made available is so that people can double up on front speakers if they wish. Doubling up on fronts lowers the over-all speaker system impedance thereby requiring more current. So, if you want to take advantage of this method, double or triple the number of M80s for the fronts .

Thanks all for your advice. It sounds like bi-amping the 3808 is not worth it. But thinking about this scenario, I am going to run another set of wires for each front. Just in-case one day I have the money to buy separate amps for the fronts or as Mojo says, connecting more M80's to the front. Now... that would be awsome! Imagine two M80's side-by-side or on the top of each other?

OK, so that is an interesting idea. Has anyone ever put 4 M80's across the front in a 2 channel config?

Would it sound better, worse, different or the same?

If I had an extra pair of M80's I think I could probably find a different use for them.

And one M80 on top of another, hmmmm, now that would be pretty tippy. Keep the dog, cat, and kids away!!!

I think it would probably screw the sound stage and imagining. It would certainly be loud, if the receiver didn't shut down.

I have a 4308 and it is very similar. If you bi amp you will use 4 of the 7 channells to power your front speakers and only be able to have 5.1 surround. I think you would get more power to the front speakers but possibbly not. When you seperate the high and low speakers within the m80's it may also change the impedance from 4 ohm to 8 ohm. Since your receiver will provide less current on account of increased resistance the total power to the speaker will not increase. Check with Axiom to see if the impedence changes when Bi-Amped.

I've had M80s, Bose 601s, Nuances, M22s and Sansuis all connected to my fronts at once!. Soundstage...what soundstage ?

Jason and I also placed M60s on top of M80s. The M60s were inverted...their woofers were up at ceiling level.

Yeah, there was a lot of presence there but we didn't exactly build a line array. It sounded like two separate, vertically-oriented and discombobulated bass images.

But it looked very intimidating and very precarious, as one speaker set was slightly tilted ala tower of Pisa.

Butch, as was said previously, there's no possibility of actually biamping with a receiver which has only one amplifier feeding through several channels. To even start on biamping two separate amplifiers would be needed, as the term implies. Also, an external crossover(with the internal speaker crossover removed or bypassed)before the amplifiers would be needed so that each amplifier would be sent only the desired frequencies.

On your question about a 4ohm speaker turning into an 8ohm speaker, no, each section is nominally 4ohms by itself. 4 ohms doesn't come about as a result of two 8ohm sections being driven in parallel. The action of the crossover keeps the impedance(roughly)at 4ohms.

Yeah, what John said.