Going active with Allae + Nap100+Atom ?

You appear to be talking about passive bi-amping not active bi-amping. Presumably that is how you’re driving the B&Ws?

I’ve never been clear as to the benefit of passive bi-amping, though no harm if you happen to have a spare power amp, when the improvement it might give is at no cost - if that improved the sound of the B&Ws compared to either power amp on its own, it would seem reasonable to expect likewise with Allaes.

Active bi-amping is quite another kettle of fish, entirely doing away with the passive crossover components and their limiting effect on the sound, with nothing but cable between amp and speaker driver. But yes, that does need an active crossover before the power amps, set up to match the speakers.

Thx Innocent. That's seems now a more bit clearer. I can confirm that using the B&W that way has produce a more refined sound so far, sound is clearly more extended both ways.

The Allae manual is not very informative to achieve this however, as far as I understood what is said there, I'd have to remove the crossover attached on the allae before connecting LF to the NAP 100 and HF to Atom directly. Am I getting it right ? 

If the Allae has biwiring posts simply linked for normal use, then you can passively biamp by removing the links. If it hasn’t, you can’t. When it talks about removing the passive crossover that is for driving with an active crossover before the power amps. ON NO ACCOUNT remove the passive crossover and drive the speaker direct from the power amp without an active crossiver before the power amp: unless there is circuitry to remove bass from the signal going to the tweeter you will blow it because it won’t be able to cope with the relatively high power of the bass end of the spectrum. (Bass unit without HF removed would suffer no harm, though its attempting to output the high frequencies would degrade the sound compared to feeding just a bass signal.)

BOUB, 

I take it that you know that the Allae's have one set of speaker terminals attached to the crossover then 2 sets of cables connect to the other terminals  to the top and bottom boxes, I'm not sure that bi amping is possible as you would bypass the crossover.

  I'm sure i will be corrected if i'm wrong.

Good luck.

Karl

Bouba posted:

Thx Innocent. That's seems now a more bit clearer. I can confirm that using the B&W that way has produce a more refined sound so far, sound is clearly more extended both ways.

The Allae manual is not very informative to achieve this however, as far as I understood what is said there, I'd have to remove the crossover attached on the allae before connecting LF to the NAP 100 and HF to Atom directly. Am I getting it right ? 

No.  Naim refer to Active Bi-amping.  To do this you remove the passive crossover boxes from the back of the speaker and then use a powered active crossover such as a SNAXO 242 + Hicap, along with a pair of amplifiers such as a pair of NAP250s.

Passive bi-amping is not possible here, and Naim would argue, of limited, if any, benefit on other speakers where it may be possible to do so.

Ok I get it, well a bit disappointed it'd require that much to go active bi-amp. However, given the price I'd buy for these, I'm still curious to see how they'll perform with the Atom 

According to another thread, the 100 is considered an upgrade to Atom, so as you have both that suggests using the Atom on the Allaes if you get them.

Innocent Bystander posted:

According to another thread, the 100 is considered an upgrade to Atom, so as you have both that suggests using the Atom on the Allaes if you get them.

Don't quite get what you mean innocent, based on what Richard said, I won't be able to use both to drive the Allaes, or are you suggesting using the Atom only as a source and feeding the Allaes in passive mode using the Nap amp ? 

Not as well as the Atom, but using the 100 instead of the Atom’s own internal power amp, connecting the 100 to the Atom’s preamp output, and connecting nothing to the Atom’s speaker terminals.

I'm a big fan of the Allaes.  They should work just fine with your Atom on it's own, and perhaps even better still with the  Atom as source/pre into NAP100 power. 

Many thanks to both of you, that's what I suspected. That way, there'd still be use for my lovely NAP instead of packing it up for sale

I'll tell you what I think about the Aonce they arrive, as you may be aware of it Richard, I initially planned to buy a pair of Neat floorstanders (the smallest one of the motive range) but that end up way to pricey and I did not quite like the leaned back of those speakers. In the meantime, I found that pair of Allae in beautiful rosewood finish and absolutely fell in love with their aesthetics alone. 

Hope the sound will be on paar with that lovely design. 

I'm a little pensive here, have read on our forum (not listened to myself).... that if you run Unitiqute2 with Nap100 as the amplifier, you lose a bit of synergy in the music.

Those who listened to this combination here, think it will be a better whole, synergy to only use Unitiqute2,.... without Nap100.

Could this be different with the Uniti Atom/Nap100..??

/Peder ????

to my ears, definitely sound good. 

Bouba posted:

to my ears, definitely sound good. 

To explain/be clear,...those who listened here mean musically....not sound.

Only conveys,...have not compared myself as I said.

/Peder ????

Bouba posted:

Many thanks to both of you, that's what I suspected. That way, there'd still be use for my lovely NAP instead of packing it up for sale

I'll tell you what I think about the Aonce they arrive, as you may be aware of it Richard, I initially planned to buy a pair of Neat floorstanders (the smallest one of the motive range) but that end up way to pricey and I did not quite like the leaned back of those speakers. In the meantime, I found that pair of Allae in beautiful rosewood finish and absolutely fell in love with their aesthetics alone. 

Hope the sound will be on paar with that lovely design. 

There are some lovely "Rosewood" veneers out there on Allaes.  They can look stunning.  Allaes are great value secondhand these days.

Agree. Can’t wait to see them in the flesh and hear them through my kit