[Oublie]

Hi Guys and Gals just had a thought and wondered if its been tried before.

A lot of you will have previously or currently owned high end speaker related audio equipment and have probably come across the facility to biwire or biamp speakers i.e. bridged mono amps or seperate amps for seperate drivers.

Now what i'm wondering is would there be any benefit to using two headphone amps in a mono config with a preamp to drive them and has it been tried. I for instance have a nad 3020b which has seperate preamp and power amp connections. The headphones are driven via the power amp with a resistor on the headphone out. If i were to get a second one and rig the amps so that the preamp out of one fed dual left and right to both amps and then used a stereo to mono adaptor to run left channel from one and right from the other to my headphones. With all that power on tap will i see the same effect i've seen before with using bridged mono amps on speakers.

In my case i was specifically considering the option of using two stax amps with one being used to supply the drivers and the bias voltage and the second one linked to just the drivers. In theory this would allow me to supply double the voltage to the drivers i.e. have a lot more in reserve think two srm1's giving 370v each making 740v which is getting into blue hawaii territory although sound may not anywhere near as good - there are probably issues with doing this.

Any thoughts?

 

[paaj]

isn't this much like a balanced system? or am I mixing stuff up?

 

[Oublie]

I dont think so , I think it has more in common with what i have heard referred to as a dual mono system (millet max??) I may be wrong here. Would be interested in peoples thoughts on this.

 

[moogoob]

Hmm, all this would do is keep the channels (and grounds) discrete back to the source, and perhaps leave a bit more power to each channel. Sort of like a "poor man's" balanced setup. I'm not sure what benefits this will give. Maybe a slightly enhanced soundstage...

 

[Oublie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by moogoob /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hmm, all this would do is keep the channels (and grounds) discrete back to the source, and perhaps leave a bit more power to each channel. Sort of like a "poor man's" balanced setup. I'm not sure what benefits this will give. Maybe a slightly enhanced soundstage...

Interesting although for £30 second hand for another NAD amp it might be worth trying out plus any improvement is still an improvement right?

 

[nikongod]

Proper bi-amping can only be done on a speaker with 2 drivers. There are exceptionally few headphones with 2 drivers per ear...

There was discussion of the feasibility of bi-amping the K340's before aereus got baned. It sounded like a cool idea, but there are plenty of pitfalls.

2 amps into one driver is borderline Russian roulette. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, sometimes it dosnt outright fail but still sounds like poo. Why risk the failure when there is no inadequacy in a well designed headphone amp? If you need more power you should get a more powerful amp. If you need better SQ, you should get a SINGLE amp with better SQ.

 

[Oublie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod /img/forum/go_quote.gif Proper bi-amping can only be done on a speaker with 2 drivers. There are exceptionally few headphones with 2 drivers per ear... There was discussion of the feasibility of bi-amping the K340's before aereus got baned. It sounded like a cool idea, but there are plenty of pitfalls. 2 amps into one driver is borderline Russian roulette. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, sometimes it dosnt outright fail but still sounds like poo. Why risk the failure when there is no inadequacy in a well designed headphone amp? If you need more power you should get a more powerful amp. If you need better SQ, you should get a SINGLE amp with better SQ.

What about bridged mono where two amps are used one for each speaker if you read what i wrote above thats really what i'm talking about but your right about biamping just as i mentioned above. As for getting a better amp i suppose thats true but i'm talking about one amp into one driver but bridged so the left and right channels on the amp are feeding the same left or right mono signal to a single driver. with a single preamp controling both. Essentially look at a speaker setup with twin monoblock power amps and replace the speakers with headphones connected to the headphone connectors.

 

[moogoob]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod /img/forum/go_quote.gif Proper bi-amping can only be done on a speaker with 2 drivers. There are exceptionally few headphones with 2 drivers per ear... There was discussion of the feasibility of bi-amping the K340's before aereus got baned. It sounded like a cool idea, but there are plenty of pitfalls. 2 amps into one driver is borderline Russian roulette. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, sometimes it dosnt outright fail but still sounds like poo. Why risk the failure when there is no inadequacy in a well designed headphone amp? If you need more power you should get a more powerful amp. If you need better SQ, you should get a SINGLE amp with better SQ.

I think what the OP was describing is using a single mono amp for each driver. As I said in my earlier response, this would allow each channel its own ground, thereby maybe giving some small benefit.

Maybe it might be interesting to try, though you'd have to recable and if you're doing that you may as well make 'em balanced (as a bonus, you could probably reterminate as XLR and customize your amp to use them as dual single-ended connectors... with the benefit of being able to use them balanced the rest of the time.).

EDIT: Of course, I'm a graphic designer, not an audio DIYer. I'm sure someone will come out of the woodworks to tell me why what I said is utter rubbish.

 

[Oublie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by moogoob /img/forum/go_quote.gif EDIT: Of course, I'm ...not an audio DIYer. I'm sure someone will come out of the woodworks to tell me why what I said is utter rubbish.

Snap!

 

[ericj]

Bi-amping stax just sounds silly. they're already balanced 100% of the time.

The only dual-driver headphones i know of that are worth hearing are the K340 and the PMB-85 Dual Action. And I forget, there was a k270 or k280 or something.

 

[Oublie]

not biwiring, not balanced and not dual drivers guys!

Ericj your probably right about the stax though i'd probably fry myself trying.

 

[IceClass]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ericj /img/forum/go_quote.gif Bi-amping stax just sounds silly. they're already balanced 100% of the time.

What about using mono-blocks with a Stax set-up?
Would you reap the same benefits you would by using mono-blocks on a speaker rig?

 

[krmathis]

No biampling, but...
We drove headphones (SR-007, SR-007BL, 4070 and SR-404) using mono blocks at the Norwegian meet. Plenty powerful, and sounded quite amazing I must say.

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