How does bi-wiring work?


To start, I do bi-wire my main speakers. However, I am somewhat confused about how bi-wiring works given that the speakers have internal crossovers and the signals received by them have the same full frequency range going to both sets of terminals.

I confess that I don't see any difference from single wiring in terms of the speaker's performance. What am I missing?

128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xjmeyers

Bi-Wiring, Part 1: ๐‘ป๐’‰๐’† ๐‘บ๐’†๐’„๐’“๐’†๐’• ๐‘ป๐’“๐’–๐’•๐’‰ ๐‘น๐’†๐’—๐’†๐’‚๐’๐’†๐’…

ย 

Thank you for the video; I watched all 27 minutes. It confirmed -- in spades -- what I had surmised (but only after I paid $600 more for their being "bi-wired").

Talk about being suckered! Jeez!!

wrongโ€ฆ.. but

ย to extract the full impact of a true biwire your speakers need be properly configured with a separate set of mid / high binding posts AND you must use what is called an external biwire speaker cable AND if at all possible physically separate he bass cable from the mid / high cable ( this is why an internally biwire cable is 90 ineffective. The physics are well understoodโ€ฆ. pass current thru a wire and create a expanding and collapsing magnetic field . This field in turn modulates the mid / high signal. 4โ€ matters. lots of good engineers with ears can hear it. I have a nice set of shotgun external biwire cables that i loan out for this express purposeโ€ฆthey have about 50 K fedex miles on themโ€ฆ. your milageโ€ฆ. may varyโ€ฆ.

@jmeyersย  , your question interests me as well.ย  I have an ancient (30 year old) pair of B&W 805 (the Matrix seies) that are set up for bi-wiring, so back in the days when I was making a lot of money, I did bi-wire them.ย  I have a real tough time with A/Bs, plus I am lazy and would rather listen than test and experiment, so I have never tried comparing how I feel about bi-wire versus single wire with supplied jumpers.

With all that typed, if you were to plug in "bi-wiring" or "biwiring" as a serch engine up in the "search discussions" box at the top of the page, a bunch of hits will come up.ย  I know, because I did that about 40 minutes ago.ย  Some answers were that bi-wiring makes no difference and some people gave technical explanations of why bi-wiring is a good thing on speakers that are set up to be bi-wired.ย  Unfortunately (for me), I do not have a great mind for undertsanding that type of technical theory, so it mostly left me blank.

But maybe try your own A/B comparison and/or do the search of the site I described, and see if any of the explanations make more sense to you than they did for me.

(1) Iโ€™ve not experienced any bi-wiring performance improvements in my systems, and Iโ€™m in the โ€œbest-you-can-get single wire + jumpersโ€ camp.

NOTE: bi-amping is a different story.

ย 

(2) However, others express different positive results in their systems. So here is the โ€œdiagonal bi-wiringโ€ option to test out for yourself.

โ€œ โ€ฆ Diagonal bi-wiring connects the red speaker cable to the bass/mid post and the black cable to the treble post. Then jumpers connect bass to treble in the usual fashion. I tested this arrangement out of curiosity and the results were pleasantly surprisingโ€ฆโ€

https://www.nordost.com/downloads/multiLanguage/NorseJumperinstructions_new.pdf


Each to his own โ€ฆ. Carry on.