Getting into Bi-Amping my system.

J

Jimmy Hardin

Junior
Jan 29, 2013
314
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Hey there guys, I saw a video the other night that looked pretty interesting and seemed pretty easy the way the guy was doing it and it has gotten me to want to look into Bi-Amping my system. take in mind that i am very new to the process of Bi-Amping.here is what i am wanting to do.

I am wanting to use my crossover which is a nady cx22sw crossover, I have a behringer EP 4000 power amp and 4 Carvin LS 1502's, I am planning on using 4 conductor wire for the wiring. on this video it shows that i come out of the crossover and go into channel 1 with my highs and channel 2 with my lows. ok now on my speaker outputs , i can come out of output 1 to a pair of speakers , but what can i do with the output 2 side? I know he said for subs but can i also use side 2 for the other pair of speakers that i have? or do i have to have a seperate amp for the other two as well. I always run my amp stereo, can i still do that while using the crossover? the speakers are Bi-amp compatible BTW.
 
That video is full of bad information to the point of damaging your speakers!!!

First of all do not trust anyone who's amp rack is a mess like the one in the video!!

In the set up like they demonstrated you do not put the highs on channel 1 and the lows on channel 2 like they said to. Connecting it like they showed would blow up the high frequency driver in most cabinets in very short order. He may have ment to say it the other way around and if so should have corrected himself or maybe he has wired his speaker cables to flip the pins 1 to pins 2 from one end to the other, if that is the case that is a bad thing to do!

Two way speaker cabinets like your Carvin's and most others with a bi-amp ready Speakon connectors are wired with the lows on channel 1 and the highs on channel 2, that is the 1+ 1- 2+ 2- connections on the Speakon plug, the amp and the speaker.

You do not unknowingly make wide radical sweeps of the crossover frequency while program audio is running through the system, if you notice at first they have the crossover in the divided by 10 (yellow led is on) mode, at the lower end of the range that would be sending dangerously low frequencies to the high frequency driver. They must have noticed that mistake and you can see after an edit in the video the green light is on for normal frequency operation.

Luckily for them their Peavey cabinets still have some high pass filtering in place on the high frequency driver when in bi-amp operation.

As for you proposed bi-amping set up:

- You could not run stereo and bi-amp with just the one amp you have.
- To run all four of your speakers bi-amp would put a two ohm load on your amp, at least on the low frequency side, it would work but not something I would do.

- There mention of a sub when he pointed to the channel two output, in the configuration they set up that was bad info. Channel two of the amp (when properly set up for bi-amping) will have the high frequencies on it. The Speakon connector on channel one has Ch. 1 output on pins 1+ 1- and Ch. 2 output on pins 2+ 2-, the amps channel two is being used and the connection is made on the Ch. 1 output Speakon. The Ch.1 Speakon is a four conductor connection giving you the low and highs on one connector for your four conductor bi-amp cable.

- To add subs to the system you will need another amp and then you would be actually tri-amping.
- If you have subs I would run your Carvin 1502's passive as you have and bi-amp between the subs to your Carvin 1502's with a crossover frequency around 100hz. To do that I would still look at getting another amp, use one for your top boxes and one for the subs.


 
Mike Caldwell said:
That video is full of bad information to the point of damaging your speakers!!!

First of all do not trust anyone who's amp rack is a mess like the one in the video!!

In the set up like they demonstrated you do not put the highs on channel 1 and the lows on channel 2 like they said to. Connecting it like they showed would blow up the high frequency driver in most cabinets in very short order. He may have ment to say it the other way around and if so should have corrected himself or maybe he has wired his speaker cables to flip the pins 1 to pins 2 from one end to the other, if that is the case that is a bad thing to do!

Two way speaker cabinets like your Carvin's and most others with a bi-amp ready Speakon connectors are wired with the lows on channel 1 and the highs on channel 2, that is the 1+ 1- 2+ 2- connections on the Speakon plug, the amp and the speaker.

You do not unknowingly make wide radical sweeps of the crossover frequency while program audio is running through the system, if you notice at first they have the crossover in the divided by 10 (yellow led is on) mode, at the lower end of the range that would be sending dangerously low frequencies to the high frequency driver. They must have noticed that mistake and you can see after an edit in the video the green light is on for normal frequency operation.

Luckily for them their Peavey cabinets still have some high pass filtering in place on the high frequency driver when in bi-amp operation.

As for you proposed bi-amping set up:

- You could not run stereo and bi-amp with just the one amp you have.
- To run all four of your speakers bi-amp would put a two ohm load on your amp, at least on the low frequency side, it would work but not something I would do.

- There mention of a sub when he pointed to the channel two output, in the configuration they set up that was bad info. Channel two of the amp (when properly set up for bi-amping) will have the high frequencies on it. The Speakon connector on channel one has Ch. 1 output on pins 1+ 1- and Ch. 2 output on pins 2+ 2-, the amps channel two is being used and the connection is made on the Ch. 1 output Speakon. The Ch.1 Speakon is a four conductor connection giving you the low and highs on one connector for your four conductor bi-amp cable.

- To add subs to the system you will need another amp and then you would be actually tri-amping.
- If you have subs I would run your Carvin 1502's passive as you have and bi-amp between the subs to your Carvin 1502's with a crossover frequency around 100hz. To do that I would still look at getting another amp, use one for your top boxes and one for the subs.
Click to expand...

Thanks , In the back of my mind it sounded too good to be true. I have the nady crossover running just my subs, Mainly because i dont like the fixed freq. crossover point on the internal crossover. and i was wanting to start running my tops through it to get its full potential out of it. Thank you so much for your info. it helped me a great deal to keep from making a mistake. I have checked on the back of my amp and i cant bi-amp anyways, so it would probably been a pain to even fool with it. lol thanks again. you were a big help. I think i will just run my tops like i am currently doing . lol :)
 
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