Posted by Terry Koehn on October 04, 2002 at 22:39:52:
In Reply to: Re: Re: photos: Simple is Better posted by Albert Porter on October 04, 2002 at 17:56:43:
I think I would have to say that in the past 40 years of my speaker listen experience..That The Bi-Amp Concept has done more harm than good !
Not that Bi-Amp is a bad Idea,but rather it is rarely applied properly !...
Speakers companies spend tremendous amounts time & energy trying to present a Honest Accurate Speaker and then comes along The After Market X-Overs with Multi-Band Freq. Knobs Galore to complety undue the precise work of the speaker manufacture. !..
The average User-Tech just doesn't have the test equipment or Anechoic chamber,Golden ears, to balance the different Driver levels & positioning time delay,combining phasing to a execute a final balance.!
In the long run..The 2-4 way X-Over just becomes another Equalizer..
Whereas, Bi-Amping in a Manufactured Studio Monitor is a great idea...A perfect match of Drivers,power,X-Over for a complete dedicated final closed system...Plug it in,adjust the room position and go for a mix that you can trust !!
Why Do you want to bi-Amp a Full Range ESL speaker ?
Answer : The Full-Range ESL X-Over Interface is so inefficient and it has input impedances that are so low that it requires so much power, no mortal amp can effectively drive it!So, if we divide the load in half the very low impedances becomes tolerable..!.
Or, in Wolcott amp's you build an amp that doesn't care about 1/2 ohm High-Power-Loads...Wolcott amp is like [4] EL34 Dynaco amps in parallel..whoop !
One person wrote the reason for bi-amping a ESL U-1 was to relieve the tweeter midrange from having to do bass work...YES ,but at the expensive lose of NO LONGER HAVE A ONE POINT SOURCE SPEAKER ..All coherent and in perfect phase..He was speaking Cone /Box talk...
Not ESL Speaker talk.. You don't want to hear the bottom run of the violin shift over from the tweeter panel to 4' away to the bass panel...