I need quick help- Bi-amp Threshold/McIntosh

Plato,
Altough I am not familiar with the 2700, all McIntosh amps that I know of have gain contols, so matching gain should be easy.
Also your statement that bi-amping will be of little or no benefit, is wrong. There are are many reasons why it will be of benefit. Two big ones are:
1. Twice the power (you can never have too much)
2. Either more separation between frequencies (each amp only having to handle limited bandwith with horizontal biamping) or more separation between channels (with vertical biamping)

I personally would probably use two Threshold amps rather than mixing with the McIntosh....but I am not a fan of McIntosh.
Richard

Sorry about that guys, it's an MC7200 SS amp. Thanks! Tom

I agree with sticking to Threshold.I don,t think its neccesary with the 802s.I tried it with the 801 matrix and preffered the single Threshold. ( s/300 series 2)

The McIntosh MC7200 does have an adjustable gain setting, which when I thought it was tube with that much power, would have been great for a top bi-amp. BUT, when the guy told me it weighed 53 pounds (him thinking heavy, and me thinking light), I started to wonder how what I thought would be a pretty massive amp could weigh so little? My research led me to find it's SS, and 53 lbs still seems light to me for a 200w amp. So I guess the new question would be; would it be worth buying it as a bass amp for the 802 Matrix series III? It would cost me more than the s/300 II I have been offered, as I seem to be unable to find another s/350E anywhere. Both the Thresholds are fairly similar in output, and since the FET 10E has only one balanced out, I could just use the s/300 II from one of the unbalanced pre outs (they are both active) for the bass biamp. Actually, I think I'm answering my own question here. It does seem to make more sence to stick with Threshold, even though the price on the 7200 was very fair. Any thoughts from any of you? Thanks, Tom

First of all, Richard is completely wrong in his statement that bi-amping would give you twice the power. It would only possibly do that if one amp was twice as powerful as the other one -- and only in the frequency band in which it was used. In a bi-amp configuration, the outputs of the two amps do not add together in a linear fashion. And in the case of the McIntosh 7200 vs the Threshold, if the McIntosh amp turned out to be the less sensitive of the two amps (this may not be the case, but it could be) then you would still need a passive volume control to turn down the output of the Threshold to match the 7200.

Trich, I think you have to look at what you're trying to accomplish here. Vertical bi-amping with an identical or similar amp could help a bit, but I don't think the improvements would be that large unless you went to an external active crossover and bypassed the speaker's internal passive crossover. You are likely to get about as much benefit from bi-wiring (if you're using the internal passive crossovers) as you would from biamping -- without the extra clutter and expense for the second amp.

Also, simply buying a single, higher-quality, more powerful amplifier (and bi-wiring) could work very well. Then you could sell the Threshold and hopefully not be out too much dough. Good luck to you. :)

As I said, you really have to examine what your goals are. It may take some experimenting for you to hit that right mix of elements. But that's the fun of this hobby, right?