My new-to-me 820s

[wws944]

Short of running the wires straight to the components, the best speaker terminations are cold welds [ideal crimped] with the clamped ring tongue connector being its disconnect equivalent, so cheap as they look, Altec provided the right kind of terminal strip, though probably not of the best materials, but an anti-oxidant paste such as Penetrox will ensure a long term, low loss, electrically stable connection.

The problem is that one has to unscrew/rescrew about about 20 screws to remove/replace each of the back panels. This makes access to the strip a PITA.

Another option would be to remove the N800D crossovers and run separate woofer and HF horn wires to the outside. Then I can easily play with biamping vs the original crossovers (and HF horn settings on the N800D) for a while.

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You just need to check the input sensitivity of the amps and make sure you won't have a gain issue. I was going the MiniDSP route before I built my Hiraga passive XOs. But the passives sound so good I'm leaving well enough alone.

That MiniDSP board looks nice! And certainly is reasonably priced.

The amps I would be using for biamping are 1970s era SS McIntosh. One is my trusty MA-6100. (I bought this amp new in 1975ish.) The power amp section is direct coupled and rated at 70w/ch. The other is a MC-2100 - 105w/ch with autoformers. The MC-2100 has gain controls on it. So I should be able to match the input sensitivities pretty closely. Yeah, it is way more power than these speakers will ever need. But since I already have them, the cost is zero.

I'd assume I'd want the MC-2100 on the woofers due to the autoformers and lower DF?