To Bi-wire or not?

From my experience, all the speakers I owned benefited from bi-wire. To me the effect was the sound opened up, bass and treble each got their own feed which allowed the signal to be separated by frequency IE- Highs and Lows are separated which freed up the signal to the drivers. This is just my observation

Speakers I bi-wired with vs jumper
Spendor SP1/2e
Eminent Tech LFT 8a
Magnepan MG3.6
B&W 801 III
Revel F52

regardless IF a change is better or worse, there usually is a change in the sound by using either an acutal bi wired speaker cable, or going with shotguns, twin runs of same cabling.

The idea of Blue Jeans saying what they did is about their perspectives on wire in general.

I'm thinking they are a bit off on that no need for breaking business they told you. I've yet to find a cable of any sort which did not need time with signals flowing through them to improve.

I have found too that wires do have an influence on different areas of the spectrum... some are more bottom end oriented, some aren't. new or otherwise... high priced or low. they're like clothes. They might look great, and have a nice price tag on them, but if they don't fit you, why buy them.

If someone says "wire is just wire" and/or "wires don't need run in time", and you feel differently, just move on. It's a waste of time and energy to tell them otherwise.

Okeeteekid -- I looked into the Kappa 9's a bit. As you realize, but others may not, and assuming that you are using the "extended/normal" switch in the back in the "extended" position, at bass frequencies they are perhaps the most difficult speaker load ever devised by mankind.

In that mode, which seems to be the one most commonly preferred, they go down below 0.8 ohms at some bass frequencies, causing them to be widely known as amp killers.

Your 12 foot round-trip run of 12 gauge wire has a resistance of only about 0.02 ohms, which is negligible even in comparison to the 0.8 ohms. But I calculate that approximately 0.2 ohms of resistance anywhere in the path would result in a 2db bass loss. You shouldn't have that much resistance if all of the joints between cables, terminations, jacks, etc. are well-made and are not oxidized, but when we are dealing with such low levels of resistance being significant, who knows?

In any event, considering how uniquely difficult that speaker is in the bass region, I would not make any generalizations from your observations about bi-wiring that are applicable to anything other than your own setup.

Regards,
-- Al

hi al, just did the same test using the renaissance 90's that are not as difficult to run as the kappa 9's and i still get a 1db drop from 20hz to 100hz slightly less than the kappa 9's 2db, i still think it has something to do with current, i have all infinity speakers that are mostly hard to run, i have a pair of infinity towers that i use for ht i think they are 6 ohms i will try the test on them to see what happens.
greg

Okeeteekid,

Here's a theory I just thought of: You are not really losing bass in the bi-wire configuration; you are just getting better bass damping (meaning tighter, more well-controlled bass), for reasons I'll explain below. That would very conceivably produce the slight measured loss in bass response that you have found (I presume using test tones), and on musical material could very conceivably produce a subjective impression of less bass.

The reason that may be happening is as follows:

In the bi-wire configuration, back-emf from the low frequency drivers is conducted directly (and only) back to the amplifier, which in your case has an extremely good damping factor (i.e., an extremely low output impedance). So the back-emf is absorbed there very effectively.

In the single-wire configuration, some small fraction of the back-emf from the low frequency drivers is conducted through the jumpers into the mid-frequency drivers, where it will not be effectively damped (because the impedance is much higher than at the amplifier output), and, more significantly, WHERE IT WILL PRODUCE SOUND THROUGH THE MID-FREQUENCY DRIVERS, ADDING TO THE SOUND PRODUCED BY THE LOW FREQUENCY DRIVERS.

So you may indeed be getting measurably more bass in the single-wire configuration, but bass which is the result of back-emf effects and is therefore less accurate!

Regards,
-- Al