How does bi-wiring work?

@tomic601 

Yes. I think I was in my kick drum stage… when I thought that a concussive kick drum was the mark of a good system. But the AMTs had a really smooth and beautiful midrange… which is why I bought them.  

Hello jmeyers!  If you already have two sets of wires going to your speakers, you have an intereting option. It requires some bravery and will surely void your warranty. It's easy if you have a seperate preamp & power amp. So far, I have been shocked by the poor quality of parts used in the internal crossovers in most speakers. Quality parts can easily cost way over $100 per side and most mfgrs don't use them. So you pay for nice boxes and fine drivers and get poor sound. So forget passive crossovers! Take the grilles off your speakers, loosen the screws and remove the woofer. (Dont forget to put them back later on.) What kind of wire did they use? Thick or thin? Check it with a magnet. Is the wire magnetic? If so, get rid of it. You can buy an electronic two way crossover for $100 or less from miniDSP. Most of us have an "old" stereo amp sitting around; probably less powerful than the one you are now using. Does your current speaker cabinet only have one set of terminals on the back? Open them up and add a pair of terminal to the back. Run new, non ferrous, heavy duty wires from the tweeter to those terminals. Discard the internal crossover. Connect the woofer directly to the original terminals (replace them if the magnet sticks to them) with suitable heavy wires. Twelve guge is heavy enough; (copper or silver of course). Many would point out that it's a good idea to put a protective capacitor in the tweeter's path to protect it in case your amp goes haywire; but your old amp works, doesn't it? And you're a careful person, right? You aways shut off the amp before changing wires, right? So, don't worry. Most folks wouldn't know what size or brand to use anyway. (Mundorf, 20 mfd would be about right). But dont worry, send the high's directly to your old amp (the tweeter amp, getting the output from the electronic crossover's high output terminals). Your current amp feeds the woofer directly, getting its signal from the low output of the electronic crossover. Now, the woofer amp is never troubled by bird whistles or picolos. The tweeter amp is nerver called upon to put out cannon shots; drums punished by over zeaous madmen; or the roar of lions, waterfalls; or electronis aliens (only the overtones). It will probably never need to put out more tnan15 watts. Try it! You will never go back. Enjoy the music! 

Now that multiple people have told the OP bi-wiring doesn't do anything for their setup, I'll kick in my $.02. With my speakers, I get a subtle but definite improvement. Less so with decent quality jumpers replacing the OEM plates, but still a slight improvement. Try it with your speakers and see if it does anything in your rig. All it costs is a little time. If you have to buy cables to do it, the difference, if any, probably isn't worth that much.

The main advantage I have found of bi-wiring is the maid occasionally deep cleans the house and somehow manages to unplug very secure connections.

She pulled one of the negative cables to my B&W 800 out and I didn’t notice for a week.  Ran fine.

Electronically, it does nothing.  I bi-wired because I have a giant spool of 12g pure silver wire from a military aircraft rebuild (they use silver or silver tinned copper for fire reasons, apparently).  And I enjoyed making it.  My daughter liked braiding it, so we talked as she did that.

 I also may jump to quad monoblocks.

@davetheoilguy 

The main advantage I have found of bi-wiring is the maid occasionally deep cleans the house and somehow manages to unplug very secure connections.

She pulled one of the negative cables to my B&W 800 out and I didn’t notice for a week.  Ran fine.

You should have lost output from a driver if you bi-wired correctly with a different set of cables to separate inputs of  independent drivers.  Are there still jumpers of some sort between the inputs?