How does bi-wiring work?

Actually the, filter if well designed like for example a Vandersteen ( passing Electrical Engineering since 1977 ) will back the crossover point ALL the  way to the amplifier. Like i said, the basic physics are well understood…. 

I have identical single and shotgun bi-wire versions of the same cable and marginally prefer the shotgun bi-wire so that’s what I use.  I attribute the difference to basically doubling the gauge of the cable that significantly reduces resistance.  In the end I don’t care why, I just know it sounds better.  But, and this is significant, the difference is subtle enough that I’d upgrade all upstream electronics first before I’d consider going to a shotgun bi-wire cable because I think you get potentially bigger improvements there.  But, if you feel like you’ve got all that sorted I think bi-wiring is at least worth trying.  A more significant improvement occurred when I used banana jumpers in addition to my shotgun bi-wire spade cables.  Using both together significantly tightened up the bass and improved imaging and I won’t listen without the jumpers.  Don’t know why it works, but it definitely does and a cheap tweak so well worth trying IME.

@soix  , this is probably a stupid question, but what is "shotgun" biwiring?

And to clarify--does it matter that the jumpers you used in conjunction with the biwire are bananas?  The reason I ask about that is because I still have the (gold plated) jumpers that came with my B&Ws, but they are not bananas, they are contoured strips designed to just fit underneath the speaker terminal nuts, and since they accomplish the same thing, would the bananas actually have a different effect?  (I can see where the bananas would be easier to experiment with and use.)

. . . @soix , I guess this is the answer to my (above) question?

this is probably a stupid question, but what is "shotgun" biwiring?

@immatthewj No, that’s an excellent question. Shotgun bi-wiring refers to having two physically separated cables running for both the high and low signal legs. There are also internally bi-wired cables where both legs run together next to each other in the same sheathing rather than running separate and are just separated at the end where the cables connect to the speakers.

And to clarify--does it matter that the jumpers you used in conjunction with the biwire are bananas? The reason I ask about that is because I still have the (gold plated) jumpers that came with my B&Ws, but they are not bananas, they are contoured strips designed to just fit underneath the speaker terminal nuts, and since they accomplish the same thing, would the bananas actually have a different effect?

While the straps do the same thing, they’re basically crap and even if you don’t bi-wire you’d be well served to replace them with decent shoe jumper cables with banana connectors (bananas so you don’t have to double up on spade connections with spade jumpers). So, replacing the crap straps with real wire cables should yield sonic improvements even if you’re using single wire.  What surprised me was using banana wire jumpers with shotgun bi-wire cables still produced a significant improvement. Hope that clears it up a bit.