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Bi-amping on an ampless rig

L

lilbassboi

Jun 15, 2023
17
12
#1
So I have discovered bi-amping and have made the decision to try it, as so many so. But the issue is, my church's sound and PA system calls for an ampless rig. Can I still bi-amp?
Keep in mind, I'm still learning terms of things and how the fancy ins and outs work.
So use dummy vocabulary please and thank you!!
 
#2
No. Simply put, bi-amping means that the high frequency horn and the woofer in a speaker cabinet are each connected to a dedicated amplifier. As opposed to the common method of the speaker using a built-in passive crossover network to divide the signal from a single amplifier out to the horn and woofer.

So obviously, you have to have a bass rig with a speaker in order to bi-amp.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Make Your Own Cables: A How-To Guide Unique Arrangements of Hymns, P&W Standards, and Original Tunes
Official Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Official Heartfield Club #36
Administrator, Official Tobias Club #133
Administrator, Official Pre-Gibson Tobias Owners Club
Administrator, Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Basses
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly
Make Your Own Cables: A How-To Guide
 
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#4
Although technically not bi-amping as @WayneP defined, the key is having a crossover to separate low frequencies from mid/high frequencies.
The Tech-21 GED-2112 or DI-2112 are dual preamp units with crossover that allow you to send a separate deep and drive output to a mixer. This would meet the goal.
But worthiness really depends on your belief as to what benefits bi-amping offers. It’s never been of interest to me.
 
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#5
lilbassboi said:
So I have discovered bi-amping and have made the decision to try it, as so many so. But the issue is, my church's sound and PA system calls for an ampless rig. Can I still bi-amp?
Keep in mind, I'm still learning terms of things and how the fancy ins and outs work.
So use dummy vocabulary please and thank you!!
Click to expand...
Bi-amping was something we did in the 80's when there were only a few full frequency range cabs. It was most commonly done with a 15" woofer and a standalone horn that was the full width of the cab sitting on top of it. You may have seen some of the Voice of the Theatre speakers that were used in movie theaters that looked like that. The horn took a lot less power because the speaker element in the horn didn't really need to move much. It had a separate amplifier driving it. The woofer was most commonly a single 15" woofer as you see here and it too had its own amplifier. Dual powerblock amps allow you to not only use the same amp to run both but allow you to set the frequency where you want to separate it sending everything above that frequency to the tweeter horn and everything below it to the woofer.

VoiceOfTheTheater.jpg


I recall working at a large private music store in Portland, OR and there was a lot of interest in the GK RB800 because it could bi-amp from that one amp. The RB800 could produce a total of 400-watts rms. If you plugged a horn in the highs channel it would get a maximum of 100-watts rms. If you plugged a cab with one or more woofers, it would send that cab 300-watts. If you wanted to send everything to a full frequency cab, it would send 400-watts rms to that. Was a real nice feature prior to full frequency range cabs, which are the rule now and not the exception.

When the vast majority of cabs became full frequency cabs with built in tweeter horn, bi-amping faded pretty quickly. There were a couple of reasons for that. First off having the entire range of frequencies in one cab beat the heck out of dragging two cabs around. The second thing was that if you used two full-frequency cabs and bi-amped them, the amp that was in the high channel basically only used its tweeter horn and that was it. That really nice woofer plugged into the "high" section of the amp never moved because the frequencies sent to that cab by bi-amping it were higher than a woofer would normally play. So it was basically a waste of a cab and continues to be so.

A LOT of people confuse running a dual powerblock amp (has two discrete power channels) with one cab plugged into one channel and a second cab plugged into the other with channel bi-amping and that's NOT running in Bi-amp mode. Both of those channels are getting all of the frequencies and are actually operating in a dual-mono mode. It will actually put out into each cab a separate mono signal. I used to run a 410+115 bass stack with that type of arrangement. I put the 115 cab into one channel and the 410 into the other channel. A nice feature that my Eden WT500/800 had was a "balance control" on the front of the amp.

That balance knob was specifically there so you could adjust and blend the sound from the two channels by sending more power to one side of the amp than the other. At the time I had an acoustic B410 and a GK115bpx. That 115 was the boomiest and muddiest cab I've ever heard. When I was using an amp with a single power channel, I had to cut the Bass EQ down to 10 o'clock or so to get rid of the muddy sound it produced. That starved my poor 410 for Bass EQ. With my Eden WT500/800, I plugged one cab into each side and then turned that balance knob about 4 clicks towards the side with the 410 in it. Because I set it like that, it sent more power to the 410 cab than the 115, and I could tame it without having to cut the Bass EQ at all. I just ran it flat and that made my 410 really happy.

All that knob really did was control how much power went to the individual channels, but it worked perfectly for balancing the sound of two disparate cabs to produce a nicely blended sound. However, that is NOT bi-amping, that is running in dual-mono mode. Another nice thing about dual powerblock amps is that if you are only going to be using one cab, you can usually bridge those two power sections together and put twice as much power into one cab as you could with it plugged into just one side of the amp.

I run my Eden WT/800 bridged at 800-watts rms into my DNS-410 (1,400-watts rms power handling) at Music Festivals with a large stage. With that rig I get told to turn down if I run the master of my amp up to 10:30. So I run the master at 10:15 and be glad I never have to lug around a 200-lb 810 cab.

DSC01568.JPG
 
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#6
lilbassboi said:
Can I still bi-amp?
Click to expand...

No.

You can however use a crossover pedal. The idea is to break the signal down into two or more frequency bands, so each band can be processed discretely. After the processing is done, the signal is combined back into one channel.

For example OD typically doesn't work well if you you send it a full range bass signal. The low end tends to mush out. A crossover pedal would allow you to put the OD in a loop the has an HPF applied. Or you might choose an OD with built-in crossover features. Lot's of different combinations, so do your research to be make sure you get the specific features you want.
 
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#8
Wasnex said:
You can however use a crossover pedal. The idea is to break the signal down into two or more frequency bands, so each band can be processed discretely. After the processing is done, the signal is combined back into one channel.

For example OD typically doesn't work well if you you send it a full range bass signal. The low end tends to mush out. A crossover pedal would allow you to put the OD in a loop the has an HPF applied.
Click to expand...

This

I am using two croossover pedals on my large pedalboard: Byte Heaven Sugar Britches and Broughton Audio FFXL
 
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#10
A lot of useful info has already been said. Before even getting into the ampless aspect of it...

1 - Bi-amping was a thing in the 80s that's technologically obsolete now. It was done to get around limitations of the gear at that time, and never worked that-that great to begin with. The super-abridged version is, most bass guitar gear wasn't great at amplifying the full range of signal basses create. Low freqs require more power to reproduce than mids or highs, as well as having different acoustic properties and needing different material characteristics for the speakers and cab dimensions, etc. The idea was to split the signal into two bits, and let gear that's good at reproducing lows reproduce lows, and gear that's good at reproducing the rest of the freqs reproduce the rest. In theory. In practice it probably introduced as many issues as it solved.

But, if your amp and cab are less than 25 years old, it's probably technologically sophisticated enough to do on its own what bi-amping was trying to achieve. Modern amps and speakers and cabs are more efficient, louder, and more-full range. Gear that has less-than-full-range frequency response curves, or "baked in tonal voicing" are now designed to be that way to cater to peoples preferences, not because it's the best the technology can achieve.

2 - Even if you were using gear from the 80s that required bi-amping, if you're not amping your bass, you can't really bi-amp it.

On top of that, you're sending your signal to the PA, and the PA is sending it to the PA Mains. The PA mains have crossovers that split the signal and send the lows to the Subs, the Low-mids & High-mids to the woofers, and the highs to the tweaters. The PA is essentially doing what you're trying to do, breaking the signal up into frequency ranges and handling them by different power amps and speaker styles, and it's probably doing it better than a bi-amped bass rig ever would.

3 - Splitting signal can still be useful for other things. If you want to have one clean channel and one with FX on it, splitting can be nicer than just using a dry/wet blend. You have the full-range clean signal, and then on the FX channel, you can use a HPF or cut a low-shelf to pull out a lot of the low frequencies before any FX because a lot of FX don't play nice with bass frequencies.

I have a project where i need to split my signal into 2 channels:
Bass --> tuner --> HPF at 20Hz just to remove subharmonics before the compressor --> compressor --> ABY Mix splitter --> ...

--> Chan 1 - "Bass channel": Preamp --> Audio interface --> Ableton Channel 1
--> Chan 2 - "Sub channel": 1 octave down 100% wet --> LPF at 220Hz --> Audio Interface --> Ableton Channel 2

That gives me a bass chan and sub chan, and those two channels are then sub-grouped again. It allows me to put different FX on the bass channel, or sub channel, mute each one individually, and then put FX on the subgroup to treat them as a unit again.
IMG_0996.jpeg


I'm doing this for House music and Drum & Bass/Jungle. You might not want the Bass & Sub-bass split. But a similar setup would work just for Clean & Distortion/FX split. That might also be overkill for a church band, and your sound engineer might give you side-eye and be annoyed they have to now set up and mix 2 bass channels. Blending multiple bass signals is a major p.i.t.a., and if you don't have your FX channel already set up to blend perfectly with your clean channel, again, you could cause more problems than you're solving. You could just get fx pedals with dry/wet blends not overcomplicate the situation.
 
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#13
As others have mentioned, you probably don't need to worry about this. But if you still want a new toy to mess with, the people of TalkBass will always have your back! :thumbsup:

Have you checked out the XB Driver from Tech 21? It might help you achieve some of the tones you're looking for, or at least help you figure out if this is the kind of thing you want to explore further. Here's a link to the product page: SansAmp XB Driver
 
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#17
HX Stomp
Sansamp XB Driver
Sans Amp DI-2112
Darkglass X Ultra
Orange Bass Butler
EBS Microbass 3
BOSS LS-2 (two channels to run whatever pedal chains you want into them)

These are all boxes that split the signal into clean and dirty at the very least. Some have a DI output and others do not. You can always buy a DI box to put at the end if needed. The Stomp can split the Hz and run two separate paths (choose your amps/cabs/effects to put in each path) as the previous post mentioned.

Go ahead and experiment whether people state it is relevant or not.
 
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#19
WayneP said:
No. Simply put, bi-amping means that the high frequency horn and the woofer in a speaker cabinet are each connected to a dedicated amplifier. As opposed to the common method of the speaker using a built-in passive crossover network to divide the signal from a single amplifier out to the horn and woofer.

So obviously, you have to have a bass rig with a speaker in order to bi-amp.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Make Your Own Cables: A How-To Guide Unique Arrangements of Hymns, P&W Standards, and Original Tunes
Official Pedulla Club #45
Administrator, Official Heartfield Club #36
Administrator, Official Tobias Club #133
Administrator, Official Pre-Gibson Tobias Owners Club
Administrator, Fretless Club #943
Big Cabs Club #23
My Basses
My Rig: Stage and FOH Friendly
Make Your Own Cables: A How-To Guide
Click to expand...
That makes sense, so then might I ask why I did a bit of research and found out I can bi-amp with an HX stomp. Basically i understand that I need 1 “hi” path and 1 “lo” path. So even with that I still need bass amps?
 
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