Hello all,

I have been lurking in the forums for about a month now. I Have a question about the 770 / 7100 and my speakers. I am running LSi 15's which are 4 ohm speakers. If I got the 7100 / 770, which would be better to do Bi-amp ( 2 different channels of the amp running to the 2 different binding posts) or Bi-wire, ( 1 channel from the amp to both binding posts of the speaker.)?

Which is better, and If I bi-amp, how do you "defeat" the internal cross over in the speaker?

I know there are a few outlaws with Lsi 15's so.... Thanks in advance for the time.

Happy holidays.

Nemos2

you cant defeat the crossover unless you open up the speaker and take it out. hence bi-amping/bi-wiring will probably not do much for you. there are a lot of theories on these topics, but in my past i have talked directly to polk about things such as this and they told me bi-amping or bi-wiring is a waste of my time. i dont have lsis, but they are not too different than other polks (build wise). my only thought is that by running the lows through one amp and the highs through another amp you would get a little more separation than by having it combined. either way its going to get combined and then separated in the speaker though.

If what you want to do is actual active bi-amping, this would fall into the category of "if you have to ask how to do it, don't do it". It undoubtedly would improve the sound of your speakers, possibly to a large degree, but it is not something that you attempt without the necessary measurement equipment and knowledge about electronics and acoustics and how they relate to speaker design. You would need to quantify the design of the original passive crossover network in electro/acoustical terms and duplicate that with an active crossover network. Addtionally, all speaker systems are "voiced" by their manufacturers to achieve the sound they desire from the drivers - this would have to be duplicated by electronic eequalization. There may also be phase/time compensation in the passive crossover network that would need to be taken into consideration. If you wanted to change the voicing / phase or any other parameter, you would need to know how to achieve this with active electronics.

Thanks for the reply curegeorg and gonk.

Sounds like Bi-amping is not for me based on gonks reply. I am still interested in bi-wiring. In theory bi-wiring only increases "the band width" in which the audio signal has to travel to get to the speaker correct?

I thought that another outlaw has LSi's and I am kind of curious how they have them wired.

Again thanks for the time.

Oh yes, I have been sucked into this bi-wiring joke. The salesman raved about it, and so did the speakers' literature. So I spent the money on these over-inflated speaker wires and screw on pins so I could just plug them in, (of course following the ever important labels so as to connect them ever so properly) and sat back to be amazed by the sound improvement. Well that was a year ago and I'm still waiting to hear this improvement. Sorry if I sound cynical, but I wanted to hear an improvement so badly and all I ended up with was less money to spend on CDs and DVDs. Invest in high quality speaker cables and forget about bi-wiring.

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing in behalf of bi-wiring. The four connections to each speaker really looks cool to the novice. I mean it really looks impressive, like you know what your doing. Wow, that alone is worth the cost of the cables. So I've changed my mind, go out and buy the cables so you can have neat looking bi-wired speakers. It's a real babe magnet!

Funny, it never worked for me....maybe I'm hang'in around the wrong babes....they said something about their other boyfriends having bigger woofers that have more displacement per inches of stroke.....


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited January 16, 2004).]

bi-wiring typically achieves very little, and why spend the extra $$ on more wire and connectors and junk. i would only run more than one wire to your speakers unless you are trying to get more power to them by using two amps to run each speaker (100 X 2). that is in a sense how i have my system setup, it is technically bi-amped, but i only do it so i can integrate my amps better and get more power to my speakers.

Call me crazy but I can tell a sonic difference in my setup as a result of bi-wiring. Not night and day but enough for me to recommend it if you have the means.

Have you verified the difference with a blind test?

I have a set of Bettercables Bluetruth biwires enroute for my center channel but I plan on trying them on the Polk 15s to see how I like them . I am running Cobalt Cables now so I really will probably only see the difference between the two cables if anything.

there will ALWAYS be a debate an passive bi-amping,but in my case it cost me 0$ to do it to my 601's(b&w not bose),and i like to tweak,sometimes bass and treble just can't do it.a little tweak to the gains on the back of my b&k can be just what i need!if it's any indication of the performance i do really like it,but,i have an urge to buy a pair of 602s(604s are not gonna work in the basement and $$$) and i will break them in with my straightwire encore cables and really doubt i'll go back to the biamp gig.

as far as my opinion on biwire: useless,unless you want to 'up' the gauge of the wire(using 14/4 instead of paying for say 10 or 12 gauge)

which is exactly what i'll do when my 601s move to the rear.

and 'hound,i can tweak my gains on the b&k blind,does that count