Sr SQ

iTrader: (5)

Hey guys I was wondering if this would be a bad idea
My front end right now is powered from 2 older PPI art 2 x 150w (2150AMs)
One for the tweets and one for the mids bi-amped thru the Q Quart passives so 150w per speaker.
Anyways when I was loking at my manual I noticed it says the amps bridged are 600 x 1 @ 4ohms (still dont understand this or if its a misprint?) so if I were to rewire it up so each amp is bridged and not run it thru the Xover Bi-amped it would efectivly give each speaker 300w No? Bad idea?
For SQ (maybe I should have started the thread under SQ?)I was under the understanding Bi-amped was better but thought I would ask your thoughts on this.

Sassmaster

iTrader: (2)

you've got tons of power there, so why over power your speakers. essentially, you're be getting 600 to each tweeter and mid (crossover puts all the power to whatever driver gets the signal) last year I ran a great SQ car with 60 RMS to each mid and tweeter, 150 is lots and lots and lots for daily listening. and bi-amping usually sounds better. try using an active crossover, it will likely improve your sound a little bit over the passive.

Sr SQ

iTrader: (5)

I guess if I actually did crack I would have a good excuse for these thoughts I am very happy with the sound now but its kinda addicting like horsepower you only start out wanting a bit more or have it sound a little better and when I seen I could actually double my power for no $$$$ well you see where it came from.

Dukk

I would suspect you are already at the power limit of your passive crossovers and speakers.

zoomer

iTrader: (3)

Bi ampling WITH electronic crossovers effectively increases the headroom. Lets assume that your amp clips at 150Watts RMS into 4 ohms. (it will output more, but we have to use some numbers) By using the equation
Power= V^2/ohms we find your amp outputs 25 volts RMS. Multiply RMS volts by SquareRoot of 2 (1.414) and you get a peak ouput voltage of 35 volts. This is 300 watts peak.
Using the same method for the bridged 600 watt mode, you get 1200Watts or 70 volts peak output. But chance are it wont put out that much peak power. You need to check the specs. Lets assume it does just for fun.

Now for an example in bridged mode.
Say you have a 10 volt peak 1Khz mid signal and a 5 volt peak 5Khz High signal at the bridged amp output. The 2 signals sum up to give you 15 volts peak. This would be about 56 watts into 4 ohms, or 13 db headroom before clipping (for power use equation dB=10xLog(P1/P2) or
13db=10xlog(1200/56)

Now if you use electronic crossovers, NOT bridged, each amp only sees part of the signal:
The mid amp sees 10 volts, or 25 watts, that is 11dB of headroom before clipping at 300 watts
The HF amp sees 5 volts, or 6.25 watts, or 17db of clipping headroom for very very clean highs!
The total power that needs to be deliverd is only 31.25 watts peak! This is lower than the bridged mode, thus lower current also!

A further advantage is that without a passive cross over, the speaker is connected directly to the amp. The amp sees only the impedance of the speaker, the speaker only sees the damping factor of the amp and you get much better control.

I did not make this up... a good link that talks about this is and many other audio related topics can be found at
http://sound.westhost.com/articles.htm

Good reading!