As I read the dialogue - it is becoming more clear that there are two issues at hand: 1) using the sub's speaker level in/out to hand off the bass management of the mains to the sub's crossover, and 2) whether bi-wiring plays any part (either positive or negative) in the scheme of things.

In retrospect, the ability of the new speakers to accept bi-wiring instigated my desire to go ahead and upgrade the quantity of copper feeding the speakers. I had also pondered the possibility of running my old front speakers through the sub (although not bi-wired), but had not gotten around to it and again the bi-wiring option kind of brought that idea back to the front, albeit with a little twist since I could now bypass the sub with the high frequency signal.

Jeff's point about sending part of the signal to the fronts through a crossover while the rest of the signal isn't seeing the same crossover is really at the heart of the bi-wiring issue. Jeff's initial skepticism about the probability of there being no audible difference is also a point well taken (hypnotic trances will be dismissed for the time being ).

73Bruin on the other hand has nailed the question with regard to bass management and whether the low-pass / high-pass gap will leave some signal in the dust as described in scenarios 1 and 3. Pending further word from Adire, I suspect scenario 1 is what will happen here (as happened with his Velo in a similar setup). The variables introduced here are where I believe there could be some audible difference (either positive or negative), so I guess I will need to experiment with different x-over frequencies on both the sub and the 1050 to find the optimum settings.

It may end up where I have to make minor adjustments when I switch between 2-channel music and DVD's, maybe not.. (part of the reason for trying this is to avoid that), anyway it will be fun to test it out. Besides, at some point all of my speakers will seamlessly integrate with the sub and each other so this will no longer be an issue - right?

thanks again everyone for the feedback.