Steve I would not worry too much about the Bi Amp situation. In order to really make the most of it you will need two stereo power amps and an active crossover. The idea is to drive the top end of that system separately for a better sound.
 
I would just be going with a decent power amp and driving them as normal. The internal crossovers are your normal passive types and they will work sufficiently well for the most part.
 
drew I think you are belittling the hi fi enthusiast a little too much. I have come from that whole scene many years ago and yes while I do agree that sometimes they do get a little over enthusiastic about silly things such as cables etc I also learned a lot from the time spent being with these people, AB testing a lot of interesting things and most of all really hearing what perfection sounds like from a very early point in my career. Much of that has translated today into what I am doing now producing and mixing etc.. I have an amazing reference point in my head and a lot of it has come from hearing such greatness way back then.
 

Jeff Evans
drew I think you are belittling the hi fi enthusiast a little too much. I have come from that whole scene many years ago and yes while I do agree that sometimes they do get a little over enthusiastic about silly things such as cables etc I also learned a lot from the time spent being with these people, AB testing a lot of interesting things and most of all really hearing what perfection sounds like from a very early point in my career. Much of that has translated today into what I am doing now producing and mixing etc.. I have an amazing reference point in my head and a lot of it has come from hearing such greatness way back then.
 

From a technical perspective, bi-wiring (we're not talking bi-amping here, but bi-wiring) is idiotic. It's exists because of the understandable technical ignorance of people who lack a technical background (i.e. most people) and a desire take advantage of people who can be fooled by easily debunked technical claims, rhetoric and unreliable testimonial "evidence" that fails to produce the same results under any type of proper objective testing.
 
If you care about real, actual audio, and not your own pretensions or whatever, then you must rely on objective testing to determine whether something makes a real difference or not. Because the sad reality is that the audio world - sadly both consumer and pro - is full of misinformation, misunderstanding and downright bogus claims (like what I'm guessing some of Steve's well intended research into bi-wiring revealed).
 
In the pro world, Bob Katz actually seems to do his due diligence and managed to write an entire book that didn't have any of the common misunderstandings and misinformation regarding digital audio, but he is by far an exception. Many well respected professionals can barely write a sentence without repeating some easily disproved myth. Note that this doesn't mean they aren't great engineers - they just don't understand what's going on under the hood and it would be better for everyone if they either just didn't talk about such things or if they did what Katz would do and talk to a DSP guy (or whoever) first.
 
The problem is, when someone makes a preposterous claim and someone like me calls them on it, often the result is I am accused of not "caring", or "appreciating" high end audio, or not being able to tell the difference (often in a most pretentious tone). Of course this is nonsense when the thing they claim to be hearing can't possibly be there, and this can easily be proven through relatively simple objective tests of both the quantitative and listening variety. Unfortunately any objective test results are more difficult for a non technical person to understand, so they tend to be discounted for listening claims that everyone can understand. This does a severe disservice to the many newbs lurking, who often fear that they can't hear something not because it isn't there (or just even might not be), but because their ears or monitors or whatever aren't good enough: "So, gee, even if I can't hear it and this one guy who was talking about a bunch of stuff I don't understand says it might not even be possible for it to be there, well these other guys say they can hear it and it makes a big difference and, so just in case, I better - how much does it cost?"
 
So if people thought they might publicly embarrass themselves by making downright silly pronouncements (as they often do - they just don't ever realize it ), well maybe some of them would bother to spend 10 minutes doing an ABX test before they start making ridiculous claims. 
 
 
To someone like me, who cares about actual audio, if there is an objectively real difference, then, hey great, how much does it cost? I can decide if it's worth spending whatever it costs for it. Please don't mistake my skepticism for potentially questionable things and outright disdain for clearly bogus things as a lack of appreciation for objectively superior quality. Some stuff does indeed make an objectively noticible difference and is worth investing in.
 
Unfortunately too many of your "enthusiasts" are too ignorant (not necessarily because of any fault on their part), too lazy to test, too gullible or they just don't really care about audio as much as they are using pretending to care about audio to facilitate their own pathetic needs to feel superior. 
 
It's not hard to learn to do objective testing - the biggest difficulty seems to be that one has to be willing to accept the results whichever way they fall. It's odd to me, but for some reason people get really emotionally attached to things like sample rate or bit depth when it's really just a number. If we need a bigger number for whatever reason (or better cables, etc.), well there you go. Smaller number - hey, great. It's just a number. The question is what are the differences, if any (!), and when might they apply - always?, really only for test tones? or in what subset of real world conditions?

One thing that I do really know is that some people make outrageous claims and it makes me laugh. Like Oh I can really hear the difference between 44.1K and 48K and I say no they can’t!! Simple as that.  What my controlled AB hi fi testing taught me back then is if set up the right kind of test and get someone else to  seamlessly switch between these two things there is no way in hell that person is suddenly going to put their arm up right at the switch point and say that is the 48 K version! They will just sit right through the whole thing and say did anyone switch those things at all!!
 
People certainly imagine things when they are switching things around themselves as we all know what that effect is. In a very precise and controlled setup they would not have a hope in hell.
 
I still stand by my premise though of being very lucky to be exposed to such excellent reproduction very early on.  It has sort of stuck with me ever since.  Things such as the smoothness of top end coming from a class A valve amp driving Quad Electrostatic speakers. It really does not get any better than that.  Today you would be hard pushed getting your highs sounding so nice and smooth and yet transient and fast.  That is the sort of thing I am trying for in my mixes.
 
I locked myself away for years with a serious hi fi setup and listened to almost everything that had been recorded.  (mainly due to a very close friend of mine owning an import record store at the time)  He lent me the albums because I owned then (and still do ) the finest turntable equipment known to man and the records never suffered as a result of me playing them.  I also bought a lot too of course.
 
When I used to teach sound engineering I used to ask my students have any of you got any decent hi fi gear and have any of you actually listened to the great albums of the past and usually no one put their hands up. Then I would say OK, get that **** out of your ear, stop listening to all that mp3 crap and get serious! Go out and buy the gear and listen to the albums then come back here and learn sound engineering. That is the way I did it and it seemed to work very well for me.
 
All the amazing engineers have that in common. They all owned great gear early on and they listened and listened and listened.  In a way it is the only way. It is actually absurd to think that you can teach people sound engineering without doing all this. Bit like Miles Davis teaching Jazz for a year in Julliard. He walked out and said it was **** and you can’t teach Jazz like this.

 
Thanks for the great info and the interesting discussion gents
 
Taking on board what's been said, and having read that excellent Ethan Winer article Dave linked to, I'll be going with Method #1 - I.e. using one cable per speaker.
 
Mind you, having said that, I do have a spare hi-fi amp, and I'd love to give the bi-amping method a go some time. Would it be just a case of using RCA phono lead splitters to send the (identical) signal to each amp, and then EQ-ing them according to which drivers they are feeding?
 
For example, I currently play CDs on my PC. To hear them through my hi-fi amp/speakers I have the Left and Right Line Outs of my PC's soundcard (Line 6 TonePort UX2) connected to a pair of RCA phono inputs on my amp (each lead has a phono plug at one end and a ¼" jack plug at the other).
 
Adding another power amp to this set-up, does this method make sense?
 

 

Yes you are on the right track except that I would be thinking a proper stereo active line level crossover though rather than just trying to EQ.
 
The speakers will have a crossover frequencey from the woofers over to the mid range speaker. I would imagine the tweeter still relies on an internal passive crossover between the mid range and the tweeter.
 
I would now be looking into what the crossover frequency is between the woofers and the mid/highs. Because you have to setup the same sort of situation otherwise damage to the mid range speaker may result. Slope wise I would imagine the crossovers would at least be 12 dB/oct.
 
The other issue you are going to have is how loud do you make the top part of the system. Somehow you are going to have to calibrate that and get that right. Otherwise the balance between the bottom and top half of the system will be out as well.
 
Personally I would still start normally with just one stereo amp driving them as normal and see how they sound first. Have you got a classy power amp?
 
They may not be that good not sure. I have just found a few references to them on forums and many they say they are terrible! I would never mix on hi fi speakers either, big mistake!!
 
After seeing some very poor reviews I would be just driving them normally first to see how they sound. Have you done that yet?  Bi amping is not going to change them considerably.
 
I will do some digging and see if I can find the cross over frequency info for you.
 
Update: One review I found said they really depend on the quality of the power amp bigtime. You are going to need a real nice amp to drive these. One thing that I found from a lot of hi fi AB testing back in the old days is that power amps are NOT created equual.  Even though they all have a flat frequency response they can all sound different and I mean it. The best power amp I have heard and the closest thing to a class A valve amp is a Carver power amp. I have one a real nice 300w per channel Carver and it sounds incredible. I don't use it all these days with all the active speakers around.

Two amps for separate speaker hookup, and then - crossovers.
Or perhaps different ohmage hooking up the speakers.
 

For bi-amping, you generally want to know the frequency response of each part so that you can select an appropriate cutoff frequency and then appropriate filters are used, such as:
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkwitz–Riley_filter
 
EDIT: Stupid Forum Software! 
 
But unless there is something wrong with the built-in crossovers or the speakers are so inefficient that your amp can't drive them, I wouldn't expect much benefit from bi-amping.

 
 
Many thanks for the extra info guys.
 
Jeff, you'll be glad to hear that I'm not planning on mixing through them. I actually wanted a pair of floor-standers to use with my TV; I'm so fed up with listening to the next-to-useless rear-facing speakers in my set that I decided I wanted something a bit better. The TV speakers' lack of any bass response and overall low quality mean I generally end up wearing headphones when I'm watching a music DVD or Blu-ray.
 
I did my research on these before I bid on them, so I knew I wasn't getting quality hi-fi standard speakers, but they have to be better than the drivers in my TV, and they're just the right height!
 
My hi-fi amps are a newish 30W (RMS) per channel cheapo Cambridge Audio (which is my spare), and my beloved old Pioneer (bought in 1981) which is rated at 65W per channel. It's the Pioneer I plan to use as it's certainly got the oomph and it sounds better to my ears than the Cambridge.
 
Based on all the great advice you guys have shared here, I've decided to plump with the basic single amp, non-bi-wired set-up for the time being. Now I know what I'll need, I'll go and get some speaker cable and the connectors tomorrow.
 
 

Well Steve it is all coming out now. TV sound eh! OK thats great. I totally agree with you re Tv speakers. I have not heard one TV that sounds any good. They are all crap thee days. Even my Sony Bravia TV has a beautiful image but terrible sound.
 
I have had a nice Hi Fi amp and a nice pair of speakers connected to my TV for the last ten years and there is just nothing like it.  Everything just sounds way better and you can turn it down too and the clarity is still there.  I would say these speakers will be excellent for that purpose.  And yes a single stereo amp will do the job fine too.  And of course when anything musical comes on like a concert or anything it just sounds great as well.  All TV sound is better through a good system.  (Game of Thrones sounds fab!!!!) You will find you start hearing all the music in the background much easier too.  Shows like 24 or Homeland will reveal the fantastic composing from people such as Sean Callery.
 
Try and organise it too if possible that the audio mute button on your remote also mutes the audio going to the sound system. Fortunately the Bravia gives you that option. You can always take an output from the headphone jack but the Bravia has a pair of RCA outs that relay all incoming signals and the TV itself and you have the option of routing the audio to 'Audio System' instead of speakers and the mute button still works!

 
Here's a stock photo of my old amp Jeff, it's one of the Pioneer 'Silver & Blue' range. My memory must be going because I've done a bit of research and apparently it came out in 1982, not 81, and it's rated at 45W RMS per channel, not 65W. Mind you, I can't ever remember needing to turn up much past '3' in the past!
 

 
 
Incidentally, I took your advice and got a stereo 3.5mm plug → twin phono plug lead to connect the amp to my TV's headphone out.
 
Now to wire it all up