Biamping with Digital amps Minimally Effective?


I posted this on Audio Assylum a week ago and zero response. So, here goes on Agon...

Greetings,
And, I may add, Blessed Christmas to all!
So, I've got two PS Audio HCA-2 amps (which are not configurable to mono). I'm planning on eventually passively vertically biamping my future speakers.

I can see that with conventional amps, biamping would be prospectively beneficial. However, with the digitals and their ability to run without strain even into 2 ohms, would it not theoretically be just as good to simply biwire the speakers as opposed to vertically biamp?

My speakers will be relatively inefficient and at 4 ohms. But, this should be of little problem for the PS Audio amps. Isn't a large part of passive biamping an attempt to ante up the power? I'm not sure that adding a splitter and second interconnect will give me better separation, imaging, etc.

I have often heard inmates here suggest that a better quality amp is the way to go in leu of passive biamping using two identicle amps.

So, has anyone attempted both passive biamping and simple biwiring using digital amps, and what was your impressions? Thanks for all input!
douglas_schroeder
what is the input Impeadence of your amplifiers?

If it is below 25kOhm you have your problem in hand, most pre-amps wont drive two amplifiers below 25kOhm sensitivity because in series the load is halved, this load (what the pre-amp sees), i.e. two 20kOhms amps in bi-amp mode will look like a 10kohm load, a difficult load to drive for most pre amps.

how do I know this, I have had the same problem.

lesson learned
Guys where is Sean when you need him,ever since he left we can't get a straight answer anymore.
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Happy New Year to all.
George
Just for fun, you might want to look into the panasonic sa-xr55 digital amp. It puts out 100 watts x 7. It has a biamp feature that sends 3 amp channels into each speaker when in biamp mode. Two channels to the woofer section and 1 to the tweeter.
Many here, it seems are looking for quick, easy answers and for someone else to have done all the work and experimenting. I suppose that's okay, but sometimes there are no easy answers and you actually need to try the hookup both ways to see which way sounds best to you. I believe there are a few more factors involved here than it would appear on the surface...

And if you biwire the speakers, I believe it's the same impedance result as a single-amp hookup... In other words, either way (bi-wired or biamped) the amps are going to be looking at 4-ohms nominal impedance. With the biamp, you'll probably gain a little headroom because both channels won't be playing bass frequencies. And isolating the two crossover halves (speaker sections) might have performance benefits, as well.