it’s for mono amps, monoblocks i suppose. But naim offer only stereo amps.
It seemed very popular a good while back for cable manufacturers to make speaker cables that were split. With two going to four. A bid to sell on convenience but later found to be detrimental to quality and health of the amp.
A single run with a high quality jumper or with same cable is most probably the lesser of evils.
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Yes I see. Perhaps running half of two stereo amps would be more optimal with less strain on the transformer and power reserves ? With rise and recovery being stronger ?
i don’t know, but it would be probably a bit of waste of money. We pay for an amp and use only half…
Certainly a waste of funds if using one such amp configured with only one speaker as a mono source of sound. Although this thread is about the possible merits of bi amping. Perhaps instead of one amp running the treble and the other the bass - you have one amp running half left and the other half running right - with of course some jumper connecting the speaker inputs if offering biwire.
You could then in a conventional system run four sets of stereo amps to run a fully biwire set of speakers. 
Although at this stage active is not far off.
I haven’t tested but would be curious to experiment. Perhaps we will have some feedbacks here, i hope.
I read once that it’s the difference between biamping vertical vs horizontal. What half used can make or break - this will be determined somewhat in visualising connections correctly without blowing it all up.
Passive biamping makes little sense to me, as each amp channel still gets fed the full frequency range, and the full power signal sitll has to go through the relevant part of the crossover. It only seems worth trying if you happen to have a second amp of the same quality as the first knocking around doing nothing.
That is in contrast to active biamping (or tri-amping if you have 3-way soeakers), where the benefits of splitting the signal before the power amp, so each power amp handles a narrower frequency band, and, more particularly, powering the speaker drivers directly with no crossover in the high power path, makes every sense. With active bi-amping there are clear and palpable advantages, that most people hear instantly. So if you do have a spare power amp, the thing to consider is whether you can afford an active crossover and whether you can remove or bypass the crossover in your loudspeaker. If yes, I suggest do that - if no, then I suggest selling or finding some other gainful use for the spare power amp.
Don’t forget that passive bi-amping is a way of using amps that are high quality but insufficient alone to drive a certain speaker.
Passive bi-tri-amping is perfectly valid for power management reasons.
You may own speakers that are hard to drive for your current amp but would prefer to continue using that amp. Rather than buy a different power amp that can drive the speakers well on it’s own, or get rid of the speakers, passive bi-tri-amping can be more economical.
So while all things being equal, passive bi-amping offers little benefit where one amp was already sufficient, in a case where a speaker is a bit much for a NAP250 (for example) and really needs a NAP500 levels of current but the speaker doesn’t justify the expense, a second NAP250 would be lower cost and resolve the problem.
It is very common where tube amps are used. Their lower power means than you are either restricted to a small number of very high sensitivity speakers or that you double up and use more amps. If you have a $20K power amp and don’t like the prospect of
a more powerful but less good amp for the same money or something 3 times more expensive, for sure, you may consider passive bi-amping instead.
Certainly, if I added something like PMC DB1 in my office system, I think quality-wise that are about right for a UQ2 but power-wise not so much. If I like the speaker, I’d be more inclined to add a NAP100 and bi-amp than change the choice of speaker or the UQ2.
Yes… I’ve been reading about the two topologies… Jury seems to be undecided on which is better.
So much conflicting advice 
On another forum there’s lots of positiveness for this but here I get the impression it’s not so hot.
Since the dealer suggested it I think the way forward is loan a second power amp and listen, in BOTH vertical and horizontal format, and see how it sounds
Exactly right. If you can test it first without any financial commitment, then why not… If nothing else it will satisfy your curiosity. The only thing that I can say is that the results are unpredictable ie adding a second power amplifier won’t automatically improve the sound coming from your speakers and most likely not. However if you are fortunate enough to get an improvement then you may wish to compare the additional outlay (including an additional set of speaker cables) against what that money plus the trade in value of your existing power amp might buy you in terms of a single better power amp.
If you do trial a biamp arrangement you may well get superficially improved dynamics but at the expense of the overall cohesiveness of the sound which may feel tiring and unnatural after a while.
May I ask what speakers you are proposing to biamp?
SCM40s… it’s the ATC forum that is much more into biamping.
Interesting, thanks for the heads up
Hi Steve
I seem to recall from another thread that you use an ATC P1 with your SCM40s. The list price of two P1s and a pair of SCM40s comes to over £1500 more than active SCM40s. I have not made the comparison but would be willing to bet a small sum that the latter would sound better. (I was in my local dealers a while ago, shortly after they started selling ATCs and a couple of guys from ATC were there in the shop. Both said the 40A was a sweet spot in the whole range and their favourite amongst the consumer models.) Also, since the 40s are three-way if you are considering bi-amping why not go for tri-amping, which the 40As effectively do?
Instead, how about enjoying your lovely new system for a while before thinking about upgrading and, when you’re ready, comparing the cost of adding more power amps to going active?
Roger
When bi-amping, is the load on the preamp doubled?
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