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

. . . I just took a look on PCX and Furutech as a set of four for $237. . . .

Out of curiosity and if it’s not too personal, how extreme did you go with your jumpers?

@immatthewj Another great question. So, the person who recommended I try this was Chris Sommovigo (RIP) from Illuminati, Stereovox, Black Cat, etc. when I was reviewing some of his interconnects and speaker cables. In an offhand comment he mentioned I should try his jumpers with my Acoustic Zen Shotgun Bi-wire cables. I said, uh, what??? He was adamant so he sent some thin banana jumpers (i.e. nothing like my garden hose cables) and I was beyond skeptical, but as soon as I plugged them in the improvement was immediate and undeniable and they haven’t left my system since. I say this because I’m not sure it matters so much which cables you use for jumpers, and at least in my case they didn’t have to match my speaker cables to make a significant improvement — and the price of the jumpers Chris sent were WAY less expensive than if I bought AZ jumpers. I think you can get very good banana jumpers that are reasonably priced from Audioquest from Audio Advisor, Crutchfield, etc. and they may be more than fine and can probably be returned if not. That’s prolly what I’d do. Highly recommended to at least try. Maybe just try these as they’d work with your mix of banana and spade connectors and give you an idea at very low cost…

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_703PSCBIWR/AudioQuest-PSC-BiWire-Jumpers.html

As for the question of the zip ties with your cables, unfortunately I got nuthin’. I’d think it could work depending on how well your cables are shielded, but obviously you could try it both ways. Personally, I’d have bigger fish to fry rather than worry so much about that, especially if your cables are well shielded. But that’s just a non-educated guess.

Let me make it simple. Biwiring is nonsense. It is exactly as effective as the gauge of the combined cables. Nothing more. Biwiring sends the exact same signal down both sets of cables. Any field effects are equal in both cables. Single wired speakers split there feed to the crossovers at the rear speaker connector. Biwiring does it at the amplifier. All filtering of the input is done at the crossover. If you want to make a genuine difference, pull the passive crossovers out, use line level electronic crossovers and biamp.