Hi everyone,

I am very pleased with my new addition, the Panasonic RX-CS780. The low frequency bass it pumps out is amazing, along the same lines as the JVC Kaboom, just not as punchy.

Now the thing is, it says on the speaker cabinets 'Bi-Wiring system'. On the main section it says '4-Speaker 4-Amplifier'. So is my box bi-wired or bi-amped? What about the model's relatives, the RX-CT980 and RX-DT680 for example? Are they bi-amped or bi-wired? I'm considering at this point that 'bi' means two, so my box would be 'quad-amped', if it was considered to be bi-amped, not bi-wired. I'm hoping I've not lost anyone!!

Let me quote this from a website, it confused me a bit.

quote:

    Bi-wire vs Bi-amp

    It has come to my attention that there are some manufactures of equipment that are alowing users to "Bi-wire" their speakers.

    no where does it say what the difference between bi-wire and bi-amping is.

    just to be a little clear.

    the term bi-wire means nothing more than running two sets of wires to your speaker from a single amp.
    there is no advantage to bi-wiring your drivers. it just wastes wire.
    as the crossovers in the speaker enclousures still do the same job.

    in Bi-amping (which is a completly different animal) you have an individual amp driving an individual driver or driver array.
    there is an active crossover in the balanced/unbalanced side driving the amp which shelves the frequencies driving the amp.

    so you would in essence have one amp that drives your high tweeters and one amp that drives your woofers.

    same with tri or quad amping.

In the quote, it said bi-AMPING has an individual amplifier driving an individual driver. My box has 4 amplifiers, but says it's bi-WIRED.

Can anyone help with this?

Simple answer RA 4 amps 4 channels...each channel driven by there own amp..2 channels/amps for high/ and 2 channels/ams for low....couldnt be simpler...hope this helps...

Thats an easy fix james...just spray and clean all the micro swiches on the deck that dont work...done it loads of times

Thats an easy fix james...just spray and clean all the micro swiches on the deck that dont work...done it loads of times

In the world of HiFi, there are arguably advantages to be had from bi-amping. 

In a portable, it's probably more of a gimmick, however, it can't do any harm, so why not, eh?

Just to be clear, bi-amps (seperate amps for tweeters & woofers) need bi-wires to work, so Panasonic labelling your boomer "bi-wiring" was just a bit confusing. The two sets of speaker terminals per channel mean it's definitely bi-amped.

we might wanna keep this up for future references, 

although a little confusing, reading it a few times might help. 

(Old thread, I know, but nobody has posted the correct answer, so I can't help myself)

The OP writes; "it says on the speaker cabinets 'Bi-Wiring system'"

That means the speakers support bi-wiring, as they have separate terminals for the woofers and tweeters. Support for bi-wiring is a feature you can only find on speakers, and only passive ones.

Bi-amping means there are separate amplifiers for bass and treble, so this is a feature of the amplifier section, and not of the speakers. But to utilize bi-amping, you need speakers with bi-wiring support.

So the answer to your questions is;

• The speakers support bi-wiring
• Using the supplied speaker cable, connecting all four terminals on each speaker to separate wires, you are actually utilizing this bi-wiring support - you have bi-wired speakers
• The main system is bi-amped, which you need bi-wired speakers to leverage

Cheers, Richard

Cool! So theoretically you could set up time alignment on the Panasonic platinum series. Unfortunately the feature is missing...

NevOne posted:

Cool! So theoretically you could set up time alignment on the Panasonic platinum series. Unfortunately the feature is missing...

What do you mean by "time alignment"?

Cheers, Richard

Well, I found the time alignment feature in Car audio (for example Alpine 9835, Alpine 9965 head units have this feature). For Sound Quality systems, where you do a setup similar to this one (for example you have a 4 channels amp, 2 channels go to the tweeters, 2 channels go to the midbass, no crossovers - this is called "full active" in car audio slang) you can use this feature to delay the channels by microseconds. This helps the sound stage, it helps "move" the stage exactly where you want to put it, normally you need to have the voice(s) coming straight from the middle of the dashboard and other instruments aligning along the dashboard.