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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: Bi-amping and Speaker Efficiency posted by Bud on April 10, 2007 at 12:03:14:
Unfortunately, "biamp" is not an unequivocal term (if you will pardon the double negative). :^)The simplest, and I would think most common, meaning is to use two amps full range, one to drive the upper frequencies and the other to drive the lower frequencies. In this case, each amp puts out the same voltage that a single amp of the same power would, and the speaker puts out the same sound pressure. In other words, it takes two 100-watt amps to produce the same peak levels as a single 100-watt amp driving the whole speaker, using either single wire or bi-wired. The speaker sensitivity has not changed, but you must purchase twice the amp power, so in a certain slightly weird sense the effective efficiency has been cut in half.
In pro sound applications especially, biamping means to replace the crossover in the speaker with a line level crossover upstream of the amps. The speaker sensitivity has still not changed, but the tweeter amp does not need to handle bass frequencies and the woofer amp does not need to handle treble frequencies, so both can be smaller than the single full-range amp. Even better, if the tweeter is more sensitive than the woofer, it does not need to be attenuated so the tweeter amp can be even smaller. Amplifier relative sizes depend on the crossover frequency and slopes, but generally such a system will require equal or less total power than a single amp to obtain the same loudness. One of the hidden advantages is that clipping in the woofer amp is less audible because the high frequencies are not clipped, so you can get away with an even smaller amp for the woofer.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Bi-amping and Speaker Efficiency - Paul Joppa 10:37:42 04/11/07 (2)
- Re: Bi-amping and Speaker Efficiency - Bud 13:44:03 04/11/07 (1)
- Re: Bi-amping and Speaker Efficiency - Drew Eckhardt 16:31:37 04/12/07 (0)
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