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?

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@immatthewj Great.  When was the last time you encountered a legit potential tweak for 30 bucks?  I (and maybe others here) would be interested in your impressions.  Again, my experience was tighter bass and more defined imaging within the soundstage so those might be two things to pay attention to among others.

@soix  , just a quick update:  looking at those Audioquest jumpers on Crutchfield they did not appear to me to be terminated with bananas, or actually terminated with anything at all.  So I went to AA's site to look at them, and they had some Q&A about them, and what I got from the Q&A was that they are to be wrapped around the terminal posts of the speakers.  Which is not what I want to do--I definitely want the jumpers to terminate with bananas.  So I started looking on AA to see what else they had in the way of jumpers, and they actually showed quite a few ranging from cheap all the way up to (imo) way  expensive.  They do sell the Kimber 4TCs at a more reasonable price than at MD and  I would have bought the Kimbers from AA but they are out of stock.  Along with about every other set of jumpers I looked at there at AA, including the Audioquest jumpers.

At that point I took a look at the jumpers @yogiboy previously mentioned, and that led me to look at what else was availabe at 'Zon, and I decided on "Worlds Best Cable" (yes . . . I know, I know . . . but I honestly did not pick them because of the brand name) 6" pairs of 8AWG for $50.  I'll update after I receive them and get a little time listening with them installed in addition to the shotgun biwiring with Kimber that I am currently using.

 

@megabyte , it just hit me that "WBC" = "Worlds Best Cables." A couple of hours or so ago  I just ordered a set of 6" 8AWG WBC jumpers to experiment with, in addition to the shotgun biwiring I am already doing.

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

@tomic601 , oops! I missed the "AND" part. (My eyes are bad and getting worse every day.) I am shotgun biwired with two separate runs of cable, but they are actually NOT separated AT ALL. (They are running completely right next to each other.)  As a matter of fact, as I was talking to @soix about, since they are long runs of cable and I was trying to keep things sanitary, I have them zip-tied together in places. I don’t if this mitigates the zip-ties at all, but I also have the cables individually wrapped in automotive spiral wrap. But removing the zip-ties and separating the cables 4" wfouldn’t be all that difficult. But I would also say that at the binding posts where they terminate, I don’t think that those posts are even 4" apart.