Why do you think Bi-Wiring improves the sound ?

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?

I only bi-wire when I'm using speakers that have that capability. I will say that if the straps are gold plated brass, you should replace them with some good wire or the Cardas copper straps.