I am setting up a new 5.2.4 home theater. I have a Marantz AV8805 and a Yamaha MXA5200 in the mail. I have Monitor Audio Silvers all around and 4 of Monitor's CP in-ceiling speakers for the Atmos channels. I will have two extra channels on the Yamaha amp so I plan to Bi-amp the mains. My question is should I use Yamaha's bridge feature to do this or should I use the Marantz processor option to send two separate signals for the mains each to a separate input on the Amp? Would love your thoughts. Thanks.
If you're thinking you can be clever and just bridge one channel while letting the other channel run in normal mode so you can turn this 11CH amp into a 10CH amp with one high power channel, think again. I was going to do this for my center channel until I realized that Yamaha feeds both channels from the lower voltage tap on the transformer even if you only bridge one of the channels. This cuts the unbridged channel by more than half as you can see in the blue trace where the unbridged channel only produced 65 watts at 0.1% THD+N and 72 watts at 1% THD+N.
Note: If you're going to use the bridged feature of this amplifier, use it for BOTH channels.
I did not test this amplifier with more than two channels driven since it has a similar sized power supply and design layout as its predecessor which I thoroughly tested in that review. I borrowed those test results to tabulate below for your convenience.
As for that power amp, it's ok but not great in power (with lots of channels powered)
| 7** | 1kHz PSweep | 78 watts | 8 ohms | 0.1% |
