I have a set of Diamond 661s component speakers in the doors and an Alpine 9851 HU right now along with a set of the 5 1/4" Kenwood speakers in the rear panels that Lucid sells. The rears are turned down low to add in a little extra fill, but aren't a major contributor to the overall cabin sound.

The Diamonds could use some amplification beyond what the HU can honestly deliver without straining so I am in the market for solutions. I have lots of very nice audio toys in my house for critical listening, so am not terribly interested in trying to make my S2k into an audiophile's dream. While I have done a fair amount of sound deadening, it's still the case that road noise at 65+ drowns out far too much of the music to make a truly high end amp worth it to me.

I spoke with the folks at Car Toys in Portland today and they recommended a JL Audio 300/4 amp that they have installed in other S2k's over the gas tank. Their estimate was about $250 for the install including all wiring for Bi-amping the Diamonds and $399 for the amp.

Is it worth it to bi-amp in case like this? From what I have read so far it sounds like it will be harder for me to tweak the sound using the HU treble/bass controls. On the other hand, the degree of control for tweaking at the amp probably goes far beyond anything I could do at the HU in the first place.

Anyone got any experience with this that they are willing to share?

 

if they install it , they should tune the crossover properly for you. then when you want adjustments you can do it at head unit.

going active is more favorable but only if you know what you are doing. The passives leave the manufacturer to take care of their own product which makes good sense.

 

I'm happy with my bi-amp setup: Boston Acoustics components, 150 watts to each woofer and 75 watts to each tweeter off a JL 450/4.

I ran with a single amp channel to each side for about 2 years. I changed to bi-amping only recently and have been very happy with the change. I can't really say why; I don't trust my ears enough to tell you the improvement is audible. It's simpler than that: my components offer the feature and my amp has enough channels to use the feature so why not. If biamping had been a downgrade in sound quality, I think I would have noticed. I trust my ears at least that much.

It may come down more to budget. If your funds are limited, there might be other improvements that will give you more bang for your buck. My honest reaction to your question was that giving tweeters and woofers equal power is not the best use of watts. In fact, 75 total watts to each side from a high quality outboard amplifier (forget biamping) is enough to extract almost all the sound quality most component sets have to offer.

So again, consider the final goals for your system, especially whether you plan to add more amps or a subwoofer. If biamping is a high priority for you, then my only question is whether equal power to each driver is optimal. Tweeters usually only need a fraction of the power that woofers need.

Hope that helps.

 

For your application if you want the full benefits, you either need an external active x-over or an upgrade to an Alpine 9853 or 9855. I looked on alpine's web site and it does not appear that the 9851 has the internal active xover or built in 6 channel time correction.

Having recently converted my system to active using the HU internal amp for the tweeters and my cheap-o Pioneer 2 channel amp for the mids, I can say I'm really happy with how it worked out. Individual time alignment for each driver is great. Also the Alpine xover allows level adjustment of each driver up to -12dB, which is far greater range than the stock crossovers on my CDT CL-61 components. Very useful for a car like the S2000 where the stock tweeter locations are very far from each other.

Peter

 

One of the nice features of the JL Audio amp is an onboard active crossover that allows for 50 Hz - 5 kHz range and can be set for slopes of 12 or 24 dB/octave as either a high or low pass filter on a per channel basis.

The one item the higher end Alpine HUs have that would be lacking here is the time correction adjustability.