Benefit of Tri or Quad Wire compared to Bi wire

A friend of mine has speakers that are capable of being tri-wired. For years he had them bi-wired, and then when he had an opportunity he began testing tri'd configurations. He hit on one that works a lot better in his system than his bi-wired arrangement. YMMV, of course. But the downside is that finding the right combination of speaker cables in a tri-wired configuration could be enough to drive you mental.

To restate my situation:

I have the big B&W800's that were designed to be quad wired, and therefore everyone that I have know quad wired them.

There are the lucky few of us that have also actively biamped them with quad wiring.

Richard

Quad-wired? I saw only 4 speaker terminals on the N800s I had making bi-wiring the maximum possible.

Bi-amped and quad-wired? Seems more than compulsive.

Kal

My personal experience is there may be some benefit separating the LF from the MF/HF, but beyond that I would upgrade to a higher quality cable before buying more of a lower quality cable, given the same amount of money to work with. That is what I did with my tri-wired Alon's which ended up sounding better with a better quality bi-wire pair and jumpers. Keep in mind there are a lot of influencing factors including the added capacitance resulting from more wire. Therefore, each case can be different.

Kr4,

As I stated, mine are the big 800's, not the N800.

The benefit of actively biamping with quad wiring of the 800's is not a subtle improvement! The active biamping, with the Krell KBX, was the biggest single impovement that I have ever made to my system.

Know before thy speak. :)

Richard
PS> I know of one guy that had his 800's set up as I do. Before selling them he bought the N800S. He compared the two in his own home and sold the N800S.