hello all I am purchasing the 422/S8 package for a impending holiday home purchase (before I have no more cash flow, or WAF). For the moment I want to split them up for a Zone B reciever (Yamaha HTR5590) A/B stereo application in a somewhat open plan kitchen/great room. My dedicated home theater room sits below in an 800' sq L-shaped finished basement. I am considering using the remaining center speaker in a biwired center pair downstairs. My downstairs config is this; Yamaha RXV4600 (7x 130w) Intimus 1x 533-VAC Center, 2 x 533-PT mains, 4x 534-SS Surround Yamaha YST SW305 subwoofer (200w, 20-160 htz) 106" projection screen/Panasonic PTAE9000 Upsampling DVD player HDTV Tivo My questions; Can I (or should I) and how do I biwire these center speakers to provide a better center channel in the sound stage?Will the HD-X3 impedence help when driving these from one channel? Will the powered sub in the PT 533s reduce the load on my receiver to compensate? Is it all overkill?!! This reciever also has the option of 'presence channels' for ambient effects and a feature they call 'dialog lift' for improving center performance with large screens. Any opinions from Yamaha fans on the usefulness of presence channels? Next question's answer may cause me to use one pair of the 422s for this purpose. How do I share a sub accross A & B channels? I could use them in a sort of 4.1 satelite, A only set up and these receivers have a nice mulitchannel stereo DSP mode, but I'd like to be able to switch off the great room (baby sleeps nearest to it). Maybe I should just use one pair in the kitchen and let it spill into the great room (we don't use it as much now the basement is finished!) How important is timber matching subs with these satelites in music applications? The yamaha sub should perform better upstairs (same combined sq foot as basement, but cathedral ceiling in great room). Regards, James

James,

Unless something has changed about the speakers, there is no biwire option for Aperion center speakers without cutting into them (and you'd never want to do that  ). The HD-X3 is designed to route the proper frequencies where they belong without the need to bi-wire.

Additionally, I wouldn't recommend using the other zones on a Yammie to function in the bi-wire capacity, as they are not designed for that purpose. If you are really interested in doing bi-wiring, get an amp designed for that purpose and use the pre-outs from the Yammie (assuming it has them) to the amp to direct the proper power and frequencies to a bi-wirable speaker.

Best of luck!

Trev

As I understand it, you want to use two center channel speakers down stairs (the 533-VAC & the 422-C). This is NOT bi-wiring (bi-wiring is when you use two channels from your AVR programmed to output the same signal (or from a separate amp) to drive a single speaker (speaker has two sets of terminals with a jumper between them, jumper is removed for bi-wiring) (typically the bi-wireable speaker is set up so that the different channels are driving different drivers in the speaker)).  Even if your AVR allows re-programming of your channels, it sounds like you are already using all of them in a 7.1 config.  In your case, you could try wiring the two speakers in parallel which would produce a 4 ohm load to your AVR since both the 422 and 533 are rated at 8 ohms.  The preferred way of doing this is to connect the center pre-out from your AVR to a separate amp to drive the additional center.  I doubt if the cross over will make much difference, it comes down to the impedance load that the AVR sees.  As for the PTs, it has nothing to do with it since they are on separate channels.  The sub pre-out is probably independent of the A-B select (it is for my AVR).  That is, the LFE signal is available on the sub pre-out irrespective of the A-B speaker select setting (of course, you will need to read the manual for your AVR to see how it handles this situation or else test it).  A way around this is to use the trigger to turn the sub on and off (if your AVR and sub supports this) based on speaker select.  As for timber matching, this usually applies to the 5 or 7 channels.  My opinion is that the sub has little effect on timber matching.