1. Actually, Chad, I'm neither Bi-polar nor bi-polar nor bipolar. I'm just a nice guy whos been an audiofool almost 50 years and who tries to help people help themselves and who also knows how to spell and punctuate words that include prefixes.
2. 'Pedantry'? There ARE right and wrongs ways, New. Why not do it correctly?
3. Kal: "...some of Theo's statements are simply not true. For example, "I beleive (sic) that the benefit of bi-wiring (sic) is that a seprate (sic) run from the amp output allows the frequencies to seperate (sic) according (to) demand." Cables cannot do this without a crossover."
Your statement is correct, but the 2 cables are indeed driving a crossover, inside the speaker. The frequencies divide in the cables based on the impedances each is driving, with all frequencies taking the path(s) of least resistance. The 'high' cable is driving impedance that rises as the frequencies decrease and hence passes a lower proportion of lower v. upper frequencies, while the 'low' cable drives higher impedances as the frequencies increase and passes a lower proportion of high frequencies. (This all works the same way in passive biAMPing.)
One distinct advantage to biwiring a speaker system that divides bass from midrange and highs (typically a 3-way) is that this allows one to use a high-gage, very-low-resistance cable on the bass that's also inexpensive. For instance, on bass-only systems, I use home-AC cable composed of four 14g. conductors in a twisted quad. (Picture at http://gallery.audioasylum.com/cgi/wi.mpl?u=30777&f=Speakercable_700w.jpg&w=700&h=391 ; on the left.) The double 14s net to 11g.*, which achieves better driver damping than a smaller-gage cable, and it's VERY inexpensive. One doesn't get that benefit when the speaker's crossover splits frequencies into bass and MR v. treble (as a 2-way usually does), but this split allows one to use VERY-high-quality conductors for treble fairly inexpensively because one pair of conductors is plenty adequate for the low amount of power in the treble. For instance, one could use 22g. 4-nines silver in 18g. Teflon airtubes and get great-sounding treble, better than thru the probably-multiple-copper conductors of more-complex, more-expensive full-range cables.
Trying biwiring can be easy or difficult. Questions abound. Here are two--should I BUY another cable same as mine? What if the cable I borrow is different length than mine? The list goes on and on. Of course it could be easy if a buddy has just the cable one wants to try.
I have heard benefits, mostly increased transparency, from biwiring. Theyre subtle but real, at least for me.
Audioquest has a good discussion of cable theory including biwiring (starting on p. 11) on its site... http://www.audioquest.com/pdfs/aq_cable_theory.pdf . Seems to me ALL of us would benefit from reading it.
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* A little tidbit that few of us understand is that every time the same-size conductor count is doubled or halved, the net gage changes by 3. This is easy to remember because it's the same as power measured in deciBels--double or half, change is 3dB.
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