XMC-1 XPA 5 Gen 2 Outlaw 5000

[fritz]

Its all sounding pretty good now. Almost time to move it all down stairs into the basement as its taking over the livingroom. Id like to make a couple of comments about things i've read here on the forums. 
I just bi amped the xpa5 to the front left and right mains and used the 5th amp for the center. The outlaw 5000 is handling the other four channels for a 7.2 system with one channel left to spare.
I've read a lot of posts concerning whether to bi amp or not. Mostly people commenting about what they have read
and they seam to be (regurgitating) what they think is correct and not correct instead of actually trying it.
Well i'm doing it and it has increased the dynamic range and it immerses you into the movie. Without trying to puke out all the mumbo jumbo and in layman's terms it has left me wanting to turn up the volume more and more with out any fatiguing annoyance. Things I have done are upgrading the resistors and caps in the B&Ws, added 2 outlaw X12 subs, Changed to all mid grade audioquest speaker wires also made my own for the bi amping. I still want to go back into the CDM 9nts and the LCR600 center and replace and solder all the wiring to better grade wiring which wont be to hard to beat. Bottom line in my opinion is to go ahead and bi amp. I had the extra channels so why not? 

Attachments:

[petew]

I've got no opinion about bi-amping, but I'd move the amp and put the center channel speaker under the display.

Nice system you've got there.

[leonski]

You got extra power to the speaker without removing stress from the amps.

Best biamp system would be to simply bypass speaker crossovers and go 'active'.     Crossover between the amp and PreAmp is best.

Amps will than Not have to reproduce out of band frequencies.    So, while the speaker may 'ask' for 2000 to 20,000 hz the amp is 
producing the Full Spectrum.   Until you restrict it with the crossover BEFORE the amp.   

My panels are currently passively biamped with 225x2 per speaker.    Because the crossover is near the 50:50 point of Power Distrubution,
going active will buy me nearly 3db of 'apparent' amp power.    

You will reap a similar benefit, depending on Crossover Frequency should you go 'active'.

The other and Minor advantage of my system is that my speaker cabling is now about 3 feet per speaker.    No line-level splitters are employed
since amps have that feature built-in.    Potential savings of a couple connections?   

Go Biamp or NOT?    Depends on a bunch of factors.     Are you willing to rewire speakers?   Crossover point?    Willing to implement a good DSP system?
Are you willing to get REW (free) and a calibration mic?  
You COULD skip the DSP and go to a PLLXO made with capacitors and resistors, but some limits apply to that method.    Cable run distance, for example, and 
loading effects.    The Passive LL crossover is easy to experiment with, too.