If this is too long a question, please just say so, I don’t want to waste your time. I know you don’t just measure to a spec but that you a lot of critical listening, and that listening is your primary determinate for how something works.
I think it would be interesting if, when you do your listening test, you do one set without pass filters on the amplifier inputs and another with pass filters on the inputs.
Here is why I think that…
I asked about the cross-over because of the way I think bi-amping works, which, of course, could be completely out to lunch Here goes my understanding. Hopefully others here will clear up my bi-amp understanding…
First of all, as far as I know, speakers that allow bi-amping still use their internal low and high pass filters. When you are not bi-amping the input is just sent to both filters… the woofers see the low frequency stuff and the mid/tweeters see the high frequency stuff.
When you bi-amp the connection between the high and low pass filter inputs is broken. One amplifier sends a signal to the low-pass filter in the speaker and the other amp sends a signal to the high-pass filter.
Now comes the part that confuses me about bi-amping. If you don’t have a cross-over before the amps, then each of the amps is sending a full-range signal to each of the pass filters in the speaker. The low-pass filter “throws away” all the high-frequency energy and the high-pass filter “throws away” all of the low-frequency energy.
I don’t understand the interaction between a speaker pass filter and an amp. I seems like, if you don’t use a cross-over, that a 100 Watt amp will act like it has less power than spec’d because some of it is “thrown away”. Also, there is a lot of power going across a speaker cable, rather than a signal cable where almost no current flows.
To me, a cross-over in a speaker just redirects energy among some speakers, it never “thows away” any. But that can’t happen if the link between the pass filters is broken.
On the other hand, if there are pass filters are on the input to the amplifiers (like they are on my McIntosh MC901s), the pass filters on the speakers have almost nothing to “throw away”.
Dan