So tonight I decided to try bi-amping my 2 channel system with my Bryston monoblocks. It was configured like this: McIntosh MA6300 driving the woofers on my Sttafs and the Brystons driving the high ends. I was expecting it to be a bit of mess since I figured the gain of the two amps are probably vastly different (a few db is a big difference, right?). Anyway, the first thing I noticed is that the VERY wide soundstage of the McIntosh closed in. Just running the 6300 on it's own before made the music sound like it was coming from 3 feet outside the Sttafs and even from behind them. When I bi-amped, that went away. I could also pick out the sound coming from each speaker when I closed my eyes, and I had to check the speaker wire connection cause something just didn't seem "right". I thought maybe something was out of phase (even though it wasn't). Anyway, I took the bi-amping out of the equation, and my system seemed much more organic and natural.
Steve, I haven't tried bi-wiring yet from the Mac. On my Sttafs I have a custom made set of jumpers of BJ 10 AWG cable. I feel this would probably be better than bi-wiring, and it's certainly better than the stock jumpers that came with the speakers.
I sold the Brystons yesterday, so the experimentation is over for now. I'm going to miss them, but I'm happy with my Mac (obviously). Gonna keep my system simple for the time being.
"Just in the interest of 'experiment', you may want to swap +- on either the hi or low amps. this will change the relative phase and may help?"
Just so you'll know, DM, the McIntosh gear does not invert phase. That doesn't mean the recording is not backwards as to absolute phase. However, most modern day multi-mic'd recordings have no such thing as absolute phase.
What do you think of the bi-amped setup not sounding "quite right" Jan? Would it be caused by the different levels of gain between the McIntosh and the Brystons?
"I haven't tried bi-wiring yet from the Mac. On my Sttafs I have a custom made set of jumpers of BJ 10 AWG cable. I feel this would probably be better than bi-wiring, and it's certainly better than the stock jumpers that came with the speakers. "
DM, That's what I thought. I had the BJ 10 AWG for speaker cable and for the jumpers. I recently switched to BJ Canare 4S11 and biwired the Sttafs. It was quite surprising how much better things got.
DM, thats exactly what I was thinking. In fact, I thought I would be sending them back, as there probably would be little to no gain form biwiring. I was very wrong. Both my wife and I noticed vast improvements.
"What do you think of the bi-amped setup not sounding "quite right" Jan? Would it be caused by the different levels of gain between the McIntosh and the Brystons?"
I'm unclear why you would think gain would have anything to do with a shrinking soundstage. "Gain" is just another word to describe volume. If the amps had widely different volume levels for the same input voltage, then in a bi-amped set up with these two amplifiers you would have heard a more prominent low or high frequency section. That doesn't seem to be what you've described.
I really don't know why your experiment went the way it did, without being there to hear the results and fiddle with the set up, I can only guess at reasons. It may just be the personality of each of the two amplifiers wasn't very copasetic with the other. It could be the crossover in the speaker really isn't what you want for bi-amping and does better as a marketing device than as a functional system. I'm certainly not a fan of bi-amping with the internal passive crossovers in place.
It might be the high frequency section was just grabbing its delicate parts and screamin' for its very life with a couple hundred watts of power staring it down.
I really don't know but good bi-aming results are usually designed around very similar sounding amplifiers. I don't think that's what you had there, do you?
I think it probably just comes down to bi-amping with two very different amplifiers. I'm pretty sure if I bi-amped with my McIntosh and another McIntosh amplifier, instead of Bryston mono's I'm sure it would have a more cohesive sound.
Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh?
The Brystons are all packed up and ready to ship to their new owner.