Why do you think Bi-Wiring improves the sound ?

Alan Shaw, the designer of Harbeth speakers, has typically strong views on the topic. These three quotes were taken from three separate posts on the Harbeth forum.

"I really wish this subject of biwiring would just disappear up its own terminals. I don't have many ambitions in life but killing this discussion by deleting the biwire terminals and reverting to just one input pair is going to be at the top of my 2011 New Year's Resolution list for the remaining models that still feature biwire legacy terminals! You've given me a real motivational boost!

"The terminals were fitted for one reason and one reason only: to give the user choice. Have I ever used them at exhibitions? No. Have I ever used them for critical listening? No. Have I ever used them during the design of the speaker? No. When we were offering the biwire terminals, right at the end of the design process (which has all been with single wire) I took a saw to the prototype PCB, cut in in half to isolate the bass and tweeter sections and then made a pretty PCB layout based on that. Did I listen to the biwired crossover before authorising production? No. Do I believe that even 0.00000001% of enhanced performance can be gained? No. 

"Of all the subjects ranged over in the speaker arena, this one is a complete and utter waste of time - in my opinion. But what do I know about it? I only design the speakers ....... !

"Biwiring does do one thing very well though: it introduces the one and only, much appreciated 'fiddle factor' to allow individuals a physical and psychological interaction with their speakers. What else can you do to them other than dust and polish them?"

***

"A biwire link is gold plated brass about, say, 30mm long. The claim is that this particular 30mm long piece of highly conductive metal is somehow, magically, more important than any other 30mm piece of perhaps less highly conductive metal anywhere else in the chain between the loudspeaker drive units and the power station a hundred miles away which is supplying the current that causes the cone to move and a sound to be generated. Does that sound logical? Does that sound an intellectual argument that a professor of engineering at a university could or should set his students studying? Of course not. It's a daft fixation on what is, from a point of electrical conduction, probably the best "link" in the chain from the point that the mains supply enters the house.

"The biwire link has this fascination for one reason and one reason alone - it's accessible by the user. So it lends itself to being fiddled with and to all the associated gratification of adjusting ones hifi.

"This is a non-issue. Pick a genuinely 'weak' part of the signal chain and experiment, but this big, fat brass part with countless billions of surplus electrons isn't the hold grail. Of that I am totally and absolutely certain as I've stated. You'd be better off paying attention to, let's say, 30mm of copper track on the printed circuit board that the binding posts are pressing onto which is vastly less conductive because it is thousands or millions of times thinner than the biwire link. But of course, that would involve opening the speaker and voiding the warranty."

***

"Do the exponents of this biwire mania have any concept at all that a current is a circulating concept? Circulating from the power station, through your amp, cables, crossover, voice coil and back again to the power station? Anyone into biwire connectors grasping that concept please? That concept of how electricity actually works is why there is a live and neutral pin on your wall socket. There has to be a flow. And what impedes the flow is resistance. And resistance is associated with thin parts, like the voice coil (about 6 ohms). So the fact that the biwire link has a resistance of perhaps 0.000001 ohm compared to the voice coil's 6 ohms means that as a component in the circulating loop, what dominates the resistance by a huge factor is the voice coil.

"If the concept of a circulating current is unclear or distrusted then the whole scientific world we live in collapses."

whipsaw,

Excellent post.

Yes, you'd like to think those unambiguously clear words of such a highly respected designer such as Alan would carry some weight with audiophiles.

Alas, not all of us can be so readily persuaded - amazingly enough not even all Harbeth customers!  Hence the tone of almost exasperation in Alan's voice.

We audiophiles do seem to be a suspicious, superstitious lot. Almost anything said by anyone regardless of their authority or experience, is regularly challenged and attacked by us. I should know, before I escaped this compulsion, I used to spend more time with tweaking than listening for many a year. Oh, how my fingers used to ache from the endless weekly routine of cleaning all the possible signal and electrical contacts me and my pipe cleaners could reach!

Nowadays I hardly bother at all, and guess what happended to the sound?  Nothing, nothing at all. 

Market forces and vested financial interests do also have a lot to answer for this confused state of affairs, but there's no denying the sheer persistent hardheaded arrogance of certain of us audiophiles.

As Alan says with a hint of sarcasm, 

"But what do I know about it? I only design the speakers ....... !"

Maybe biwiring is akin to the color of your favorite car?  I have my tried bi-wiring with my Sonus Faber Venere 3.0 because I purchased bare wire with 4 wire construction and I had the banana clips on hand to wire up the neighborhood.

At the time I had a NAD C375 BEE and I hooked tested single wiring versus biwiring with one set hooked up to speaker A and one set to speaker B.  I thought the sound from the biwiring was fuller - akin to the old days of turning on the loudness button.

My next test was to biwire from the Speaker A terminal and the sound was identical.  I moved and decided to try Blue Jean Cables and purchased the internal bi-wire configuration and have been happy with the my sound even as I upgraded my equipment to a McIntosh preamp and amp set-up.  

In the end I have a choice - to enjoy listening to music or aspire for 11 to magically appear on the volume knob.  While I'm open to magic, I'm enjoying the music.

So Alan Shaw says it doesn't matter and Richard Vandersteen says it absolutely matters. Two very respected speaker designers with completely different views of the same subject. Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience? What a logical fallacy. I would not add a set of binding posts to a set of speakers just to try it out. If there are already two sets of binding posts, give it a try for yourself and make your own decision.

The crossovers in your speaker virtually split your cable into multiple cable of different frequency bands. Unlike the speakers themselves through mechanical non linearities and Doppler induced IM distortion or amplifier non linearities creating IM distortion, cables don’t have those mechanisms, certainly not within many orders of magnitude of anything else in the system. Resistance is not a non linearity so it does not contribute to IM distortion. As mentioned previously other than increasing gauge, makes no difference. Bi amping can reduce IM distortion which can justify multiple terminals.


I don’t believe or not believe either, I work on the soundness of the arguments and I have yet to hear a solid argument other than increased gauge for biwiring. If you are purposely trying to change the frequency response with cables then it would be easier with a biwiring setup, but cables make poor tone controls.

Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience?