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Bi-amping with Audioquest cables

Owners of Audioquest hyperlitz cables will know that these cables are made up of multi-strand wires, which are individually insulated. This makes the job of bi-wiring more effective and quite straight-forward. In spite of this, Audioquest have told me that they should not be used for bi-amping (ie two pairs of bass and treble wires at both speaker and Amp ends,)but instead, I should use TWO pairs of cables. Nevertheless, before I was advised of this, I had in fact configured a single pair of their Indigo cables into a a bi-amp set up and still use them like this to this day with good effect. I have now managed to pick up a pair of their Moonlight cables which are currently single wired and am considering re-wiring them the same as the Indigo's. Does anyone know why I shouldn't be doing this? Could this cause problems with Impedence?(I have emailed Audioquest but to date not had a reply).
lt346mp
elberoth2's avatar
elberoth2
1,223 posts
 
Bi-wiring within a single Audioquest cable works perfectly fine.
lt346mp OP
12 posts
 
Moving swiftly on - has anyone made any sonic evaluations between using an internally bi-wired cable as oppossed to a true bi-wired set-up, using two of the same kind of cables? I've read other threads where folk have bi-wired using the Midnight cables paired with the more expensive Sterling cables, but none where the same cables has been used for both treble and bass. I am curious as to whether the folk using the Midnight/Sterling combination would reap more rewards by doing away with the cheaper Midnights and simply bi-wiring 'internally' with the superior Sterlings. Anybody got any thoughts?
hudsonhawk
137 posts
 
I had a single biwire of Midnight II. I recently picked up a 2nd pair of Midnight II on eBay and switched to a double bi-wire... and the difference was huge. No competition at all.
davemitchell
253 posts
 
Lt346mp asks a good question. I have experimented quite a bit with those kinds of comparisons.

Comparing your example of a double bi-wire set of Midnight (bass) and Sterling (highs), to a single-biwire with a single Sterling cable, the Midnight/Sterling combo will win easily assuming you have a 3-way speaker. The reason is that the advantages of having two physically separate cables along with double the overall gauge trumps any advantage offered by the superior metal quality of the few Sterling conductors that would be devoted to the low frequencies in a single bi-wire.

Also, with most most loudspeakers (nearly any 3-way), the cable connected to the bass will not be as critical in terms of metal quality. The kinds of improvements one would hear with better copper or silver at higher frequencies is not as significant at lower frequencies. Is there a sonic difference with better conductors at low frequencies? Yes, just not to the same degree as with high frequencies.

With 2-way speakers, where the crossover occurs right in the critical midrange region, it is much more important to have equal metal quality (and typically identical cables, or nearly identical cables) for the highs and lows. This is true to a much smaller extent for some 3-way speakers with a higher x-over point or a gradual 1st order (6db/octave) crossover, like a Vandersteen or Thiel.
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