Confused about biamping speakers?

Some speakers offer the ability to separate their passive crossovers into two, sometimes three-way systems so multiple amplifiers can be used. Why would anyone wish to use two amplifiers on a pair of speakers when one will do? Paul answers the question. Have a question you want Paul to answer? Go to www.psaudio.com/ask-paul/. Want to engage with more audiophiles? Head over to our forums. www.psaudio/com/forum/

[@skipklauber1162]

There are no hard rules. You have to take it home and try it for yourself. Wise words and the best advice. It’s great when someone isn’t trying to sell you something. Or if they are, they’re doing it in a relaxed and courteous manner.

[@bernarddussault2365]

so...can hi use a paire of 10w tube mono for my focal's tweeters and a 100w stereo amp for my woofer ??

[@Geerladenlad]

What about using a tube amp for the tweeters and a solid state amp for the low end?

[@terryramsey7093]

Do I need an electronic crossover between the amp and the tweeter on a bi-amp?

[@milojenikolovski7522]

Always learn something new from You, regards Mr.Paul.

[@tarquesh]

I have for years my audio equipment bi-amped. I start with it, when i bought loudspeakers with 4 connections on one loudspeaker. I put out the bridges, bought forks and extra loudspeaker cable. To make it complete, i connected an extra set of loudspeakers on an amplifier. The idea to create a wall of sound were Phill Spector is famous about, i enjoy to make it happen. Every driver get its own channel, excluding one setup who is normally amped, and yes i use only amplifiers from 1 brand to get no troubles with impedance, and watts. The results are so good, that i do not make any changes for the first time i connected all up. I use 4 amps and 4 loudspeakers. The bad thing is only for the audio brands, i have not to buy audio anymore. So i bought a Swiss watch. This setup i made: 1 integrated amp with 4 loudspeaker connections, 1 custom intallation amp with 8 loudspeaker connections, 1 phono amp, 1 digital amp with dac. Last, i am more a 2 way loudspeaker fan, because three way is more bussy, it missing quieteness in the soundscape. So the tweeter and woofers synergy produce well ballanced mid frequencies. This only by good engineerd 2 way loudspeakers. And bi-amp this will be making from a room an arena.

[@phillipjohnson7583]

Golden response: "What I would question, the actual need for doing it?"

[@Brian_Fantastic]

Ok, so you described using a Y connector out of the one pre-out on the back of the AVR, but what if you have the ability to send 2 discrete channels to each set of posts? Like assigning one of the unused height channels an amp and running it in conjunction with the front. If it's a discrete channel, will you see measurable benefits?

[@Turtleback8024]

Very good question! I was actually thinking of doing that, using my unassigned Atmos posts for the second run of speaker wires for bi-amping.

[@ENGLISHISBEST]

So I could do this with my marantz that has (a) & (b) speakers by switching them both on ?. Running seperate wires from each.

[@Nandocupra]

Question… I have bi Wired speakers but I only use them single wired. Does is matter use the upper or lower entry on the speaker unit?

[@dhmallet]

I am bi-amping some Legacy Focus speakers with a McIntosh MC275 tube amp on the top and Legacy's Powerbloc2 on the bottom, which is similar to what they use on their half-active XD model. I use balanced interconnects on the top, and RCAs on the bottom, and have turned down the bass on the rear 2 db trim toggle and on my preamp. Most of the time it is fine, but with really deep bass it gets to be a little much, and I like bass. The power is way different at 75 vs 640, but I think the input sensitivity or gain as you referred to it are not matching up. I do like the sense of power I get along with exquisite detail. I did not have the same effect running either of them solo. Obviously if I had matched amps, I would not have a problem, but money is limited. Any thoughts? I love all of your videos and posts, and think highly of your company. One of my friends has a P10 and Directstreaam DAC, and it is a great system. Any possibility of PS Audio making a one box CD player for a Stellar price? To my ears, CDs sound better than streaming.

[@itisjustacomment]

I've got the same make apps which I'm going to try bi amping tomorrow . Hope that's away your issues as they are built of bi amping.

[@matthewlombax560]

Hi! Good day! I have enough knowledge in the world of audio but not the depths of it. I highly trust you so I will be asking you some questions regarding the topic of this video. So my speaker is capable of handling 15 to 500 watts on its power range according to the manual. However I'm confused to its maximum input power which is 400 watts written on the manual as well. I currently my two speakers with a 300-watt monoblock amplifier each. My money and I are good to go on upgrading the chain in a bi-amplified way. The question is would adding two additional 300-watt monoblock amplifiers do the work? Scenario would be: (2) 300-watt monoblock amplifiers for each of the speakers. Will the speaker break or the other way around - the amplifiers? Will this result in totaling the power to 600 watts to be sent to the speaker? I would really appreciate your kind reply on this. Thank you. Matt

[@rotaks1]

Dear Paul, On my stereo receiver, if I connect outputs for "Speaker A" to one set of binding posts on the loudspeaker and "Speaker B" to the other set of binding posts on the same loud speaker, then would it qualify as "BI-Amping"? Thanks.

[@privateerburrows]

Absolutely not. The speaker A and speaker B connectors in the backs of amplifiers are just parallelled. They are for people who believe in having front AND back speakers, --i.e. sound (any sound) coming at them from all directions. No value in that as far as high fidelity is concerned. (n fact, NEGATIVE value, as having the same sound coming out of more than one speaker totally destroys "imaging" in sound. Having the closest thing to a "point-source" is the first pre-condition for imaging..) For bi-amping you not only need separate power amplifiers (4 if bi-amping in stereo; 6 if tri-amping in stereo), but you also need an active crossover. An active crossover is something like a pre-amp, but with two (or three) outputs for each input (2 inputs for a stereo active crossover). Each input signal is separated into two frequency ranges. So, one output will have a low-pass filtered version of the input, and the other output a high pass filtered version of the input, and such that if you were to compute the instantaneous sum (i.e. the mix) of the two output signals, the result would look flat (unfiltered) relative to the input. And so, you connect the low-pass filtered signal to the input of one power amplifier, whose output goes to a woofer. And you connect the high pass filtered output to the input of another power amplifier whose output drives the tweeter. THAT is bi-amping. Repeat for the other channel. And the only thing better than bi-amping is tri-amping, where you split the spectrum into 3 frequency ranges: bass, mid and treble, and have 6 power amplifiers: 3 power amplifiers for the left channel, and three for the right channel. Tri-amping requires a double-crossover: One around 400 Hz to separate bass from mid frequencies. and one at around 2500Hz to separate mid from tweeter channels. I don't know where you buy active crossovers. I design and build my own when I need them, I'm an electrical engineer by profession, and sound is my passion, and I don't trust anybody else to design things they way I would, so I don't even know what's in the market; as I don't follow the market; I don't even care. " If you can buy it, it is garbage." That's my motto. But so, bi-amping and tri-amping is not a DIY thing for most people; it's involved and you need equipment to calibrate gains to achieve flat dbSPL results. The type of crossover matters. I'm leaning towards linear phase filters -based crossovers, these days, but for a good start I'd recommend Linkwitz-Riley. (That's not a brand name; it is a type of filter.) Linkwitz Riley filter based active crossovering has the two output channels remain in phase relative to each other throughout the crossover region, which is a great thing, as it reduces the phasing problems to deal with; but they are not input-to-output phase coherent or phase-linear, and so would be less than "reference speaker" grade in my book --though in everybogy else's book it seems any garbage can pass for a reference speaker if its frequency response is flat enough... phase be damned...

[@privateerburrows]

Sorry, but I didn't say anything at all about speakers. I can't fathom what you percieve me as having said that is not correct. I was re-describing the concept of bi-amping for someone who did not understand the way you explained it; I was not talking about speakers at any point.

[@seththurman170]

I like to i amp so at different volume levels I can adjust the tweeter or bass output without using crossovers

[@MrTruth111]

I love my bi-amp system. Not really high end, but I am getting there. I have an Arcam A80 and a P80 connected to a pair of Canton 790.2 DC's the beauty of this speaker is that the mids and the high's are fed by one amp, and the bass for the other amp, in essence it is a 4 way system, the mids are seperated as well. I notice a difference quite easily, I went back and forth with an audiophile friend and had some fun with it. The sound is more relaxed and dynamic, overtones and spatiousness become more audible. But it depends highly on the speakers, if people want to bi-amp using small monitors, with one amp feeding only a little tweeter I think it is a waste of effort. Also Arcam used to promote and facilitate biamping and on forums people using Arcam tend to hear the difference more than other brands. But it is the same as speaker cables, it goes a bit beyond science, that they can't measure why it sounds better or different. It is a highly personal subject. And I fear the placebo effect has some grounds too.

[@MrMarantzman]

Well done again Mr McGowan, I never understood biamping before now I do..

[@pappo666]

So Biamping from the same amp has no benefit? did i get this right? i been recommended to bi amy my B&W 702 S2 from my denon home theatre amp they said i would get cleaner sound but i was on the same thought train as you said to get a power amp instead and overflow them with power

[@techsamurai11]

Which Denon do you have? I bi-amp the old 703s using Marantz 8000 series but I only use 5 speakers and the Marantz is a beast. The 702 requires power - you can get a lot of cheap power like emotiva or monolith but I would bi-amp. All these speakers have bad binding posts that are not signal friendly so bi-amping sorta fixes parts of it. One reviewer was saying that the new series 3 or series 2 doesn't need power, meanwhile he's reviewing the 705 signature with 5,000 and 10,000 pound receivers recommending the 10,000 one😄

[@eetubackman4044]

Isn't that the whole advantage of biamping? Active crossovers don't consume power from the amp like resistors and nonideal caps and inductors, the db differences between drivers can be equalized without using power consuming L-pads. Also impedance and resonance equalization are not needed for the active crossovers to work properly. Not sure about this but isn't removing the passive components from between the amp and the driver making the damping factor higher since bigger currents are allowed to flow and so forcing the driver to decelerate faster? I would think also that in the end if the amps are not a concern, active filters become lower in cost vs. as well performing passive filters.

[@ericmoss6110]

Hi Paul I enjoy your videos. One complaint I have is that the volume of the intro/outro versus the volume of your voice. I have to turn up the volume when you are talking then the outro comes in and is way too loud. Again thanks for this video, this is a great explanation.

[@gamerfoo8287]

I'm hooked to biamping and active crossovers and couldn't imagine to ever go back. My highs are driven with a small tube amplifier and my lows with a cheap Crown Class D amp. This setup (for less than 1000 bucks) sounds better to my ears than all passive single amp options and I tested a lot...

[@davidsagarra9841]

Interesting, which crossover are you using?

[@gamerfoo8287]

@@davidsagarra9841 miniDSP 2x4 HD

[@itisjustacomment]

I have rhe same named pre and power a Myryad T40 and T60 does the power add up with setting up two ? Meaning 40 high and 60 low meaning 100 total. Instead of bi wiring just though my 60 watt power? I'm I wrong, plus would my system sort out the loads or speaker cross overs . As 40watt just to the tweeter somes a low at all frequency, hoping the cross over works?

[@MegaF1guy]

Great video Paul. Buying the same brand name amps for bi-amping in my opinion is REALLY important because of the reasons you state in the video, also different name brand amps are probably going to sound different from one another which I would think wouldn't be good for overall sound quality. IE.... Brand A powering your highs and brand B powering your lows. Cheers

[@MrBill99]

I didn't really get the answer as to why I would bi-amp. Do some speakers need more power to sound their best? If you used your own speakers as examples, measuring with and without bi-amping, it would explain a lot. Thanks.

[@Domo2374]

Wrong link to forum. Is missing .com in address.

[@oneworldonelife2023]

Could not under after watching the video if there is a real benefit to bi amping speakers. Now we know how but can't understand why one should bi Amp. Hope you answer that in another video. Thanks.

[@bkilpatr100]

I am new to home audio for the most part. I have a somewhat strange setup and I found the best solution for me is to bi-amp. My Denon AVR-X1200W advertises that it is putting out 80W per channel. I am betting that is not the case at all , but I haven't tested it. I am using a pair of Boston VR3's for my FL and FR and a JBL Center. The Boston's sound great, but I also have a set of Martin Logan Motion 2's, and I liked the sound of the tweeters much better. I swear when I played the soundtrack to Fantasia the Martin Logans sounded like they were being powered by tube amps. Seeing as I am using two separate speakers for each channel, I bi-amped the mids/highs to the Martin Logans and the low range to the Bostons. It sounds really amazing. The bass is tight and the Martin Logan's shine, especially with brass instruments. What I am wondering is, how incorrect is it to set my system up this way, and am I doing damage to my system in the long term going this route? Both sets of speakers are 8 ohms and the AVR is not overloading the Martin Logan's as far as I can tell. It really does sound pretty amazing and powerful for an entry level system. Thanks!

[@audioguideuae6713]

Hi Paul... you are a legend!!! I do not own any PS audio as this amazing brand is not available in Dubai.... will make sure to check things out on my next trip to USA... you are always very helpful.... Thanks!!!

[@20CycleMonger]

Thanks Paul. What about bridging the amps and biwiring instead? I decided to use my amps this way. Each amp sees the same speaker load and provides twice the power. I guess using powered subwoofers counts as bumping too ;-)

[@codythompson9035]

Every setup and situation might call for something different. BUY-WIRE-ing only helps if you were running wire that was too high of a gauge to begin with. It’s a good way for a company to sell you more wire than you need though! Nothing wrong with bridging an amp, I have some 2 channel Emotivas that I have bridged to act as monoblocks.

[@Schnippen_Schnappen1]

what IS the thumbnail? or what or who is that?

[@raimissverins263]

Thank you. That helped a lot.

[@zombie80580]

paul and that a set of dial calipers 1 inch per revolution they looked like a nice set of mitutoyo

[@3tjrunner3]

Thanks Paul! I was not aware of your Demo policy. One day I may like to demo the BHK 250!

[@mataba8026]

Problem with that, is that you end up selling your car instead of delivering the BHK 250 back...

[@peartfaldo]

Has anyone figured out what "better" means???

[@gotham61]

For true biamping you need to remove the crossover in the speaker and use a low level active crossover before the power amps. In the example given you’re still driving both amps full range.

[@SpeakerBuilder]

Three way active speaker systems are being built by audiophiles, with amazing results. But you are correct, you must start with an active crossover, and you will have to build your own speakers, as factory speakers are not designed to be run in an active arrangement, and they actually may not sound as good in an active arrangement, as I have discovered. See my youtube channel for more info on active systems, I build them exclusively now, and I am doing this just for fun, not to make money or promote a business. kzbin.info/door/wFQKcgnOb1NoA-Eowimyrg

[@gotham61]

Many of the popular powered speakers use true biamping or triamping with a built in active crossover and amp channels for each driver. There were also some true multi amped dedicated systems in the past like the Linn PMS

[@gotham61]

Donnie D Acutally, at least in the late versions, there was a box under the speaker for the passive crossover in the non active version. Snell also made an active crossover for their Type A, with jumpers on the back of the speaker to bypass the internal passive crossover. There have been a few systems, but they are fairly rare and complex to set up. The most common approach is the all in one active powered speaker. Meridian have been making them for almost 40 years.

[@SpeakerBuilder]

To do multi amplifier reproductions systems well, you really have to start from scratch, select a good quality electronic crossover like Phil Marchand's units, then select good quality amplifiers, then select good quality drivers. One key to this set up involves individually selecting interconnect cables post crossover for the various frequency ranges, and individually selecting speaker cable that will work best in the target frequency range for each of the drivers.

[@Si1983h]

gotham61 Linn have made lots of active capable speakers, I’ve had four different pairs personally and currently run a pair of Ninkas in tri-amp active mode. It’s interesting to be able to compare single amp passive, bi-amp passive and bi/tri-amp active modes on the same speaker easily, you can hear an incremental improvement going from single to bi-amp but nothing on the improvement from going to active mode. Multi amp operation definitely makes a lot more sense if you’re running active crossovers but if not, you’re probably better off with one more expensive amp.

[@jessereyna7408]

On a seven speaker act unit;this would mean I would have ditch four brand new T-15 speakers just to use two towers from Polk audio just to use this method? Seems kinda wasteful financially don’t ya think?

[@bigjay1970]

What a great demo policy🙂

[@Davidkxf]

I tired biamping my Infinity Kappa speakers using two different size NAD power amps, it sounded terrible, the bass was overpowering. I then bought a used Rane AC22 active crossover, mainly so the i could adjust the gain on the one amp. I now have an active crossover but left the passive crossovers in the speakers. The Subwoofers are connected via Hi-Level to the bass amplifier and to my ears it is a huge over all improvement. I call my system hybrid crossover :)

[@404010ful]

I use two amps made by PARASOUND which I use for that. for my floor standing speakers. As an option I can bi wire with my AVR DENON .

[@dhpbear2]

Paul, I believe you missed a couple of points here. The signals going to each amp must be filtered so that highs don't get to the woofer and lows don't get to the tweeter. This also saves power and eliminated power-robbing (in some cases) crossover networks.

[@tnkpro4sho]

David Perkins just use a crossover

[@gman76utube]

David, unless you’re referring to something else, that’s what an active crossover does. The LF channel kills the highs at the preamp stage, so that it is pre-filtered before the power amp sees it, therefore no highs going to the woofer. Similarly the HF channel does the same but opposite. As a safety precaution (avoid DC), sometimes a series cap is placed on the HF power amp’s output before driving the tweeter.

[@MrTruth111]

David, he was talking about passive biamping, not active.

[@IliyaOsnovikov]

David, Paul just had described what is bi-amping. When one would use separate amps and built-in passive crossovers. What you propose is not called bi-amping.

[@factorylad5071]

Oh yes and active filter design allows greater flexibility in design. You need to have that flexibility to make a skirted filter for your bass drivers.

[@GurnamSinghchannel]

ITS MY BAD LUCK THAT YOUR COMPANY IS NOT IN MY COUNTRY

[@ProjectOverseer]

Freaky Thumbnail 😨

[@BoHolbo]

Boy! That dog seems to be following “his masters voice” (coil) 😏 I just came across your channel and I’ve been binge watching your videos, and I love it! Keep it coming sir! 🍺

[@preston6945]

The outro video is an example of why the loudness war persists.

[@richardgates7479]

I don't know... when I think of bi-amping or tri-amping a surround sound system I begin to drool.

[@BrunoDeMarques]

Anyone who didn’t fully understand the first 7 minutes of this video, should never be allowed to bi-amp their speakers. Including the ferrets living inside the tweeters.

[@bagsjr1]

I choked on my coffee! haha

[@zoltar808]

What’s with the off topic thumbnails Paul?

[@califuturist]

My 1st foray into bi-amping will be to get another lower wattage stereo power amp from the same manufacturer as my bigger amp. Then get a Dayton Audio DSP-408 or MiniDSP. Mount it between the preamp and amps. Use pink noise via the crossover to sample the speakers and room. Then have the 408 or Mini signal the higher wattage amp for the low frequency drivers and the lower wattage amp signal the high frequency drivers. Ultimately, I’ll move up to DEQX.

[@mikeparker3662]

He always makes thing harder than they are!

[@jessereyna7408]

The thing is I won’t buy a tower built like this..sounds financially wasteful for buying other equipment just use speakers like this. I just need two good towers that have one positive and negative wire posts..but there’s not many two or three speaker towers that use this method;they just do what you are saying here?! Money wasteful to me.

[@Roof_Pizza]

I wonder why Dynaudio thinks this is a joke and don't offer it on any of their very nice speakers. Hmmmm. Maybe because it is a joke?

[@privateerburrows]

Paul, 6 advantages to biamping you have not mentioned, plus an error: 1) In the frequency vecinity of the crossover range, passive crossovers introduce significant series impedance, both in the treb and bass driver circuits, which impedance locally kills damping factor and reveals speaker nonlinearities that would have remained hidden if driven from a low impedance source as they were meant to be driven. Besides, you cannot use nominal impedance, e.g. "8 ohms", in your calculations, because the actual impedance of a driver at the crossover frequency can be many times higher, and it can be capacitive or inductive or resistive or combinations, which in turn affects phasing. So, usually, building a proper passive crossover necessarily begins with an RC shunt on the speaieer terminals to reduce its impedance at high frequencies, plus an LC shunt to reduce the impedance peak at the frequency of resonance of a driver; and even then the resulting impedance won't exactly be flat; just a bulk park aproach to flattening it; but it has to be done and tested and qualified before the crossover calculations can even begin. 2) Amplifier distortion is minimizable, yet inevitable; but of all the classifications of distortion, none is more perceivable and distasteful than intermodulation distortion, which causes ghost frequencies appearing equal to the sum and difference of any two frequencies present in the input signal. So, all other things being equal, total intermodulation distortion is proportional to the square of the number of frequencies present. Given this, and given that there are many frequencies in most pieces of music, (except maybe during a Moog synth solo), it makes perfect sense to split the signal in the preamp, and let one amp handle some of the frequencies, and the other amp handle the others. Triamping is therefore even better than bi-amping, by the same token. 1/3 of the frequencies per amp, resulting in 1/9th as much intermodulation distortion, --oversimplifying it. But it actually sounds infinitely better, I tell you from personal experience. 3) Doing the crossover in the preamp allows you to better control how steep the rolloff is to be. For a tweeter I like 24 dB/octave, as tweeters are delicate and tend to get damaged with lower frequencies. Implementing a 24dB passive crossover using coils and capacitors is a friggin nightmare. Also, bi-amping (tri-amping) allows you more freedom in the choice of crossover filters to use. For bass-mid I prefer a state-variable filter, which has poor rolloff (12dB) and poor efficiency (speakers at 120deg phase at crossover frequency) but they are input-to-output phase-coherent. For mid to tweeter crossover I prefer Linkwitz Riley, which is NOT input-to output coherent, but is speaker to speaker in-phase throughout the frequency range. But there are other choices, such as Bessel crossovers, Linear Phase crossovers... 4) Passive crossovers introduce distortion, due to non-linearity of the ferrous cores for the coils. Some high end passive crossovers use air core coils to avoid this distortion, but at the cost of these coils being huge and heavy. Using electrolytic pairs back to back also introduces a bit of distortion; and film capacitor equivalents can be huge too, for a low-mid crossover. 5) Even at the accoustic level there is intermodulation distortion introduced by the drivers themselves due to doppler effect. Having all the material coming out of a single, perfect speaker, driven by a perfect amp, will present doppler effect distortion in proportion to the loudness of the signal. The more frequencies involved, the more intermodulation. Now, if say we split the spectrum into 3 channels, bass, mid and tweet, doppler can be mitigated. However, the degree of success will depend on how sharp the rolloff of the crossover filters are. With the typical 12dB rolloffs of passive filters, there is still a lot of overlap; but with preamp side crossovers designed with op-amps or DSP's you can achieve much sharper rolloffs, and better mitigate doppler intermodulation distortion. 6) Finally, with bi/tri-amping you have the freedom to taylor the type of amplifier to the frequency range. I use class D for woofer and mid, and class AB for tweeter. And now the error: You said that the gains of the two amps need to be matched; but it is not the gains, as the sensitivities of tweeters are usually much higer than the sensitivities of woofers and mid-range drivers. What needs to be matched is the final dB SPL on axis. And one more bonus thing: You talked about how much it would cost you to bi-amp, as if it involved buying 4 of an amplifier model, but the amp you need for the tweeter is much smaller than you need for woofer and mid. If you have 200W class D on your woofer, and 200W class D in your mid speaker (for a tri-amping example), you only need 50W (class AB I prefer) on the tweeter, at most --probably 25W would do. The real cost of bi-amping, for a DIY guy, is designing and building a good preamp crossover; --never mind the amps. For most people designing and building a preamp crossover is totally out of the question. The real question then is, as a company, do you do the mediocre thing that everybody else does, saying "good enough", or do you commit to what stands heads and shoulders above everybody else?

[@gman76utube]

Internetwanderer, sort of agree, but Dan covers more in a few paragraphs than the video. Very good points. I would also point out the with an active xover, the signal levels are much lower and much higher impedance, so you don’t need large expensive film caps. This is completely avoided bc you can set the freq based on an RC time constant and make the R much larger than speaker impedance, therefore the caps can be in the nF range. Small COG/NPO caps are readily available and have very good characteristics. The minidsp solution looks quite interesting, and pretty inexpensive. (If you want to go to the digital route)

[@arkadiuszmikina4563]

Dan, many thanks for that. All in all, would you recommend passive bi-amping (with passive crossovers left in the speakers and in the signal chain) or not necessarily so? I have Mirage M3si and a Icepower 1200AS2 stereo power amp which gets the signal from a preamp (DSPeaker Anti-Mode 2.0). I am thinking if buying second stereo 1200AS2 power amp and biamping my Mirages (using Y-spliter on balanced XLR cables out of the preamp) with those two stereo power amps (and still leaving passive crossovers in Mirages and still using them). Is this kind of passive biamping: A) surely will give audible sound quality improvement B) will give sound quality improvement but the improvement will be small/neglible (as still passing the signal through passive xovers in the speakers which dull the signal down) C) too many factors to estimate how big (and worthwhile) the sound improvement will be hence only trying out the biamping physicially will give me the answer ? Please help. Many thanks

[@RazorStrap]

You left out phase shift.