using USP/XSP to bi-amp

[eusebio]

if this has been covered i apologize

theoretically could i use one of these stereo pre-amps to actively biamp my fronts? lets say i picked up a Tube amp for the highs, use my current UPA-5 for the lows and disconnected the internal crossover on my speakers. i could then need to use the high pass outputs from the USP/XSP to the tube amp and the low pass to my UPA-5. then the amps connected to the respective tweeter and woofer connections on my speakers. am i missing something here? wouldn't be the first time I confused things

Thanks

[jackfish]

You have to have a crossover point and slope that will work well with the speakers. Those units might not be able to provide that.

[eusebio]

the USP/XSP can set crossover points but i am not familiar with slope

[jackfish]

Yes, but the highest setting is 250 Hz on both the USP-1 and XSP-1 and the crossover point of your loudspeakers are more than likely much higher than that. The slope on the USP-1 is 12 dB per octave which may or may not be appropriate depending on speaker design. What loudspeakers are using?

[eusebio]

ERM 6.2s

i am not seriously thinking about doing this. just curious if this could theoretically work. how would one find the slope of speakers

[ossif]

Active beamping is in this case not fully possible. Active beamping would mean that you use only an active crossover. However you cannot bypass the filter elements in your speakers, they are always there. What you end with is best a double filtering with extrem high slopes but as a downside also an amplitude shift around the crossover region.
Active beamping would make sence using the crossover in the USP or XSP for a sub that joined to the main speakers.
Since it seems that both units are lacking a level ajustment to recalibrate the high pass to the low pass, you cannot even use passive subwoofers since it is important to adapt the levels of both paths to each other.