Hello, Im new to this site but love what Ive seen tons of good no biased info. My question is in regards to bi-amping I have a set a 3-way in wall speakers for my front left and right and looking at an amp that is 7.1 but i only need 5.1 it says I can use the back surround channles to bi-amp my fronts and give them more power which sounds great. Only problem Im not sure if my speakers can handle bi-amping or what is even required to do bi-amping. The speakers have a built in crossover and I was thinking I could run one channel straight to the woofer and run the other channel to the mid and tweet but not sure if that would work right or If i need to leave crossover in or by pass it. Thanks for your help and have a great day.

If your speaker has two sets of binding posts it can be bi-amped, you would need a 4 or 2-2 conductor speaker wires and you should be good to go if you can set up the receiver correctly. If it only has one set of binding posts it is not designed to be bi-amped.

Some people swear by bi amping, some say it doesn't matter. Then you get into Bi-wiring where you run one pair of speaker wire to the speaker and hook it up to both sets of binding posts. Just remember that if you are going to Bi amp / wire to remove the shunts that connect the binding posts or you will have an issues.

Dean, here are some periods for you to use next time: ..................

You can't separate just the woofer from the rest of the speaker, and then biamp it. If you're really going to do that with a speaker that just has one set of terminals, you'll have to figure out what parts of the speaker are the woofer crossover, and what parts are the mid and tweeter crossover, and separate those two parts of the crossover. Then one amp goes to the woofer crossover plus woofer, and one amp goes to the mid and tweeter crossovers plus mid and tweeter drivers.

I think people who biamp do so mostly to use electronic crossovers, that is, components that split the audio spectrum into bass and mid/high sections at line level BEFORE the power amps, instead of using a passive crossover at the speakers. The advantages are that you can change the crossover if it's electronic, but you can't if it's made with fixed components. Also, as said, some think speakers sound better that way. They might, but might does not make right.

I know, that's not what that means, but it worked here.

What's the make and model of the 7.1 amp you're looking at? I don't understand how they can use the back surround channels to bi-amp the front speakers. That sounds like nonsense to me.

I believe I've seen this on an upper level Yamaha. It's not nonsense. The unit is put into 5.1, which liberates two amp channels. Those channels are used as the extra channels needed for biamping. The fact that the amps were originally used for back channels just means that the internal inputs to the power amps are swapped around to accomplish this.

I'm wondering whether the line level signal is available before power amplification so that the one major advantage of biamping can be used: an adjustable active crossover.

Reminds me of a Panasonic compact digital amp receiver I have. It's 7.1, but if I only use 5.1 there's a setting to route the 2 unused channels to boost front left/right.

Interesting. Thanks for the info.


Let's say you have the active line level crossover. In your previous post you talked about needing to incorporate the portions of the passive crossover within the speaker cabinet. I don't see why you'd need to do that. I've never done biamping, but it's something I'd like to try sometime.

I thought that one of the advantages of biamping is that you eliminate the phase shifts associated with passive crossovers.

I wrote that earlier post so long ago that I didn't remember doing it. Hey, at least I see that I'm consistent!


I haven't looked into this for literally decades. Last time this came up, the issue had to do with digital filters, which supposedly have no phase shift. It defies definition, however, to be able to remove certain frequencies without any phase shift, so ? ? ?

After all, the difference between a circuit that passes, say, 60 Hz and one that doesn't is a 180 degree phase shift at 60 Hz. Since single frequency notches are impossible, there's phase shift on either side of the target frequency, going from 0 far below the target, to 180 at the target, to 360 far above the target on the other side. The location of "far away" depends on the slope of the curve.

Regardless of the answer to that conundrum, electronic crossovers certainly let you tailor the crossover frequencies, response, and slopes (Q) so that you can obtain the best sounding, the best controlled phase shift. This can only be done with passive crossovers if you have hundreds of inductors and capacitors to play with, the layout system and time to try them out, and enough pairs of speakers to compare different crossovers.