Are there any audible benefits to be or tri-amping?

NH

More power.

You can avoid passive crossovers.

Every speaker gets its own amp,they dont interfier..

Almost every consumer speaker I've seen still has the passive crossover in circuit basically because they can't rely on an external cross over network being present and don't want to deal with a fried speaker when the customer plugs it up incorrectly then blames the vendor rather than admit he just fried his speakers through incompetence.

Some professional systems don't and the latest trend is actually to build both the digital signal processing and separate amps for each cone into to speaker itself. You just run CobraNet (audio over Ethernet) to the speaker and it Just Works.

It would be extremely cool to be able to do this with consumer equipment. I can see it now "The Monster Pure Audio Ethernet cable" retailing at $100 a meter being sold to the same people who are spending $100 on HDMI cables. I wonder if there is a medical name for people believing they can hear or see non existent differences induced by spending kilobucks on cables.

To the OP I wouldn't worry about bi-amping, tri-amping etc. I'd just find the best speakers you can afford.

Why would someone avoid them?!!



As I said before: more power. And that's it.

What about bi-wiring ? Does it offer any audible benefit? Is there any ABX tests of these?

From the "electric" point of view it doesn't make any sense. You may, as well, use thicker wires if necessary.

Thank you. Just with the cost of t-amps and my speakers ability to be tri-amped, I just wanted to give it a go.

Thanks for the input all

NH

It doesnt nessecerely mean more power!It depends on what amp (amps) you use,right!


I would,I you ever heard the difference between active and passive crossover,you would too!!

Audiophile.

[/quote]
passive crossovers: Why would someone avoid them?!!
[/quote]
-speakers are driven by low output impedance amplifier, and not by some filter having higher output impedance
-instead of large components for crossover (bipolar elcos and ferrit cores) filtering takes place at low level signals. Smaller caps are required, active filtering replaces inductors. You can even filter fully in digital domain.
-better matching of drivers with different sensitivity
-better (more complex) filter response become possible. Also time delay equalisation

Why not avoid them??

• Active filters means that practically any crossover/eq filter response is possible, economic and stable.
  
• Getting rid of passive crossovers means that the loudspeaker typically is reduced to a minimum-phase system that is simpler to correct.
  
• For pro solutions, bi-amping/N-amping means that lo-freq amplifiers can often be driven at higher saturation levels without nasty harmonics leaking into hf drivers.
  
• Bi-amping means that speaker drivers can be selected on the basis of sound/price etc with less regards to sensitivity differences. For passive systems, a very sensitive hf driver means that a power resistor (soaking amplifier power) is necessary to obtain a flat response.
  
• For some systems, non-linear correction is possible (search for "Angelino Farina" and "Volterra")

I'm interested in this as well

It seems to me that you are repeating an answer that is incomplete and not generally true.

-k


I doubt that you will find any serioud ABX test proving the benefit of bi-wiring. The main benefit (at audiofrequencies at least) would be to increase the gauge.

-k

Yes that makes sense.

Looked it up. It sounds good but a lot of people require more than 6W.
Maybe you could use existing hardware by sending each speaker the standard digital signal (spdif or whatever other current standard there is) and selecting the channel on the speaker.

Oh yes. There are only a handful of active high fidelity speakers.

If you don´t build them your self,then theres more options!


I wonder why some people cant even hear the difference beetwen affordable cables,maybee it´s a medical reason...

I am following this and laughing a bit. Using those huge cables from the amp to the speaker is funny as a lot of the time they are wired with bell wire inside the enclosure. Kind of makes it all ridiculous.

As for multiple amps for speakers, well, I have never ever seen a demonstration which proves bi-amping or tri-amping is superior. But it does sell a lot more amps and expensive cables. There used to be a lot of ads and articles abut the perceived superiority of bi-amping and tri-amping. And it may sound better due to the placebo effect but I have never seen this proven to be fact. YMMV

Anyway how an you prove that you hear a difference..
Then why doesn´t everybody use bell wire from the amp o the speakers,if everything else is placebo?
And a BIG amp that makes the cables warm to touch.
And to get rid of the crossover use just one speaker to do the whole audio spectra.

On the first count you didn't look far enough for example

http://www.jblpro.com/installedsound/vpseries/index.html

Are CobraNet compatible and put out more like 1KW.

On the second count there are lots of active high fidelity speakers but they are all designed as studio monitors and are designed to sound extremely good at the sweet spot that the engineers head occupies and generally suck else where. For example

http://www.tannoy.com/Ellipse10



Indeed also in many high power systems the amount of heat that you would dissipate in the passive crossover network would be unacceptable. The same problem affects speakers cables, in a 20m run you could end up losing 20% of your amplifier power in the cables. It makes such more sense to put an active cross over and separate amps in the cab itself and just run signal to the cab.

Sory my mistake. The cobranet site had something called "cobracom" on it which provides power as well as audio data over ethernet and which I misread as "cobranet". Cobranet looks like a useful standard. Well standardizing on anything would be useful really.

What are you talking about?

You must be mixing differences that have been proved to impact listeners and those that have not.

-k

No i´m just surprised with people saying you can´t hear a difference between cables or biamping or triamping.There must be prov an stuff,I can hear differences and I don´t need proof.I trust my ears...and my brain..
I had a triampsystem in my car a few years ago,in fact is was fouramps one for the sub to,just imagine setting that system up with one amp and passive crossovers..And if anyone cant hear the difference between that system and a oneamp system,you got to be either deaf or dead..
I see only bennefits,especialy NO passive crossovers!

Did you measure your system to ensure that you were comparing apples and apples?

I did a small single-blind listening test as part of my master thesis. It involved digitally filtered active crossovers followed by biamping, compared to passively filtered "bi-amping". It proved to be very difficult to notice differences once the system gain as well as on-axis frequency response was equalised.

-k

When you trip over your tweeter cable, your woofer remains connected.

Some consumer speakers are designed to be bi-amped - often they are very inefficient or have drivers with very different impedance profiles, so giving each driver or set of drivers its own amp makes sense. But most of the dealers and manufacturers of this equipment have been very honest with me saying that bi-wiring these will not offer any audible benefit, since the same amp is driving both.