Re: Stereo vs bridged mono
Life was simpler in the good old days when men were men and they didn't run amps bridged, or down to 2 ohms. :-(
While most of the discussion so far is accurate it doesn't really address your question, or what your question should be.
Yes, distortion is higher in bridge mode but only very slightly higher, just like running an amp at 2 ohms is higher distortion than that same amp at 4 ohms. So yes, distortion may be higher, but no, it is NOT AUDIBLE in my informed judgement.
One benefit from not running your amps at maximum load normally, is that you can double up in case of an emergency, like a random amp channel crapping out, which does happen even with premium amps. In fully loaded/bridged mode, one channel going down takes out the whole amp... With bigger amps running stereo, just move the speaker, or speakers to another amp, and keep on truckin.
If everything is running bridged and already maxed out you have nowhere to go.
Another subtle benefit from running bigger amps less hard is you have more thermal headroom (so you could play louder longer), and reliability will be better from lower operating temps (MTBF doubles for every 10'C drop)..
JR
PS Running the amps with less headroom, could lead to occasional transient current limiting, that might be too brief to register on meters, but may be subtly audible (like transient clipping), on clean but loud program material.
