Need Help on How to Set Up Monitors + Amp (To Bridge or Not?)

[DonaldDemon]

We are running a very low-budget set up and plan on upgrading when possible but for now we have two gigs coming up and I want to be sure how we have it set up is optima, w/o risk of blowing anything.

I am trying to decide whether to run the monitor power amp in bridged mono or parallel. I just changed it over to bridged mono to give more power to the monitors. We are daisy chaining 3 stage monitors off of one Behringer EP2500 power amp. I don’t even really know if this connection is series or parallel. The monitors are no name brand and only have one Speak-on connection on each side. I assume that would be in series?

In the past we would run one output to one monitor and another to two daisy chained off output 2, in parallel mode. That seems wrong to me so I changed it. This is the bassists equipment and he has no clue how to use it (I am trying to learn more).

Any help from you knowledgeable folks would be greatly appreciated.

[GCDEF]

Bad plan. That amp is only rated for 4 ohms bridged. Most likely your monitors are 8 ohms and daisy chaining them will drop you to 2.67 ohms I believe.

That amp claims 650 watts into 4 ohms and 450 into 8. Run one monitor off one channel for 450 watts and daisy chain the other two off the other channel for 325 watts each. I'd be really, really surprised if that's not enough power for monitors. Seems like you had it right before.

Almost all pass through connections on speakers are going to be parallel.

[DonaldDemon]

Originally Posted by GCDEF

Bad plan. That amp is only rated for 4 ohms bridged. Most likely your monitors are 8 ohms and daisy chaining them will drop you to 2.67 ohms I believe.

That amp claims 650 watts into 4 ohms and 450 into 8. Run one monitor off one channel for 450 watts and daisy chain the other two off the other channel for 325 watts each. I'd be really, really surprised if that's not enough power for monitors. Seems like you had it right before.

Almost all pass through connections on speakers are going to be parallel.

So you are saying that daisy-chaining them most likely makes the connections in parallel, thus dropping the ohms? I guess the old way worked ok, I just felt like it was never quite loud enough. I also figured since we are only going one connection (Mon/Aux out) that we only needed one channel for the monitors amps. I don’t know, I get confused with this stuff.

The power amp has DIP switches to make it either parallel or stereo if you aren't bridging them. For the mains we keep them at parallel.

[GCDEF]

Originally Posted by DonaldDemon

So you are saying that daisy-chaining them most likely makes the connections in parallel, thus dropping the ohms? I guess the old way worked ok, I just felt like it was never quite loud enough. I also figured since we are only going one connection (Mon/Aux out) that we only needed one channel for the monitors amps. I don’t know, I get confused with this stuff.

The power amp has DIP switches to make it either parallel or stereo if you aren't bridging them. For the mains we keep them at parallel.

It's almost certainly a parallel connection. And if you only have one mix, you'd want to set the amp on parallel. What kind of speakers are they?

[DonaldDemon]

Originally Posted by GCDEF

It's almost certainly a parallel connection. And if you only have one mix, you'd want to set the amp on parallel. What kind of speakers are they?

Ok, yes only one mix for the monitors. I don't know the brand, that's part of the problem. They look like custom made stage monitors. There is no name or listing of impedance or power handling.