Legacy Empire Owner's Manual - Biamplification
9
Biamplification
Your Legacy speakers offer the options of conventional wiring,
biwiring, passive biamplification or active biamplification. The
following is a summary of these options.
CONVENTIONAL WIRING
This format is the simplest way to connect your loudspeakers to
your amplifier. A single twin-conductor cable is used to link the
loudspeaker to a single channel of amplification. Jumper wires must
be left in place on the loudspeaker.
BIWIRING
Biwiring allows one to minimize the cable losses between the
amplifier and the loudspeaker. This is accomplished with a single
stereo amplifier by running separate sets of cables to the satellite
section and the subwoofer section from the same channel of
amplification.
This technique allows one to “play” with wire parameters a bit
(such as heavy gauge wire on the sub sections and light gauge solid
core on the satellites).
When biwiring, the use of gold spade lugs or dual banana plugs
can make the task much easier and safer than bare wire connections.
Again, the major reasons for biwiring over conventional wiring are
greater power transfer (improved efficiency) and tighter control over
the drivers (better damping).
PASSIVE BIAMPING
This option can yield even better results than biwiring due to
broader distribution of power requirements.
Passive biamplification allows low frequency current demands to
be routed to a separate channel of amplification, thus reducing strain
on the satellite amplifier and preventing subwoofer back-EMF from
modulating with the upper frequencies. There are two types of
passive biamplification;Vertical biamping (which requires two
identical stereo amplifiers or four monoblocs) and Horizontal
biamping (which does not require identical amplifiers).
1. Vertical Biamping
Vertical biamplification requires the dedication of a single stereo
amplifier for the left speaker, and another stereo amplifier for the
right speaker. This configuration improves channel separation and
can improve imaging slightly. If your preamp does not have two sets
of left/right outputs, you will need a pair of Y-adapters or a signal
splitter, such as a dual amp balancer, which will also allow adjustment
of subwoofer/satellite input levels.