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Biwire cable on a standard 2 terminal speaker?

Is this simply a dumb idea?

13 years ago after auditioning many different speaker cables I came across some MIT biwires which at the time were expensive to buy.The difference with these cables was the quality of sound they produced on my Def Tech BP2000's which are biwireable.

After all these years I finally took possession of a pair of AV13 LS-6 line arrays. They are not biwireable. I purchased a set of Reality cables which seem to work OK. I do have issues with sound as I try to marry my cables and equipment to these speakers.

Out of curiosity I connected the Reality cables to Def Techs, listened, then put the MIT biwires back in. The MIT cable produced far more magic in terms of soundstage, imaging, air, all the reasons why I bought them so many years ago.

The wife asked why I don't use them with our new speakers. The answer was simple, "they're biwires, 4 terminals don't fit on 2 binding posts. In reality, they could. Would there be a reason not to try other than reterminating the ends to spade lugs?

The biwires cables have a built-in network box which I pretty sure separate the high and low frequencies. So I'm defeating the idea of a biwire cable by connecting the separated wires (frequencies) together as one. Maybe I just answered my own question. More experienced folks may have better knowledge than I I'm sure.
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kr4's avatar
kr4
3,680 posts
 
1. If there's a network to separate the high and low frequencies (which I doubt), you would want to defeat that separation by combining the wires for a non-biwired speaker.

2. OTOH, the presence of such a network (which I doubt) would impose a loss with this cable compared to an ordinary single-wire arrangement.

Kal
xti16
1,525 posts
 
I have musicline bi-wire cables on my Dynaudio C1's. Musicline was big about 20years ago and it is more of a 'Shotgun' wire. 4 wires per cable split into 2 16 ga stranded (24 strands for the low) and 2 16 ga stranded (104 strands for the highs). I've combined them and they very good compared to when I tried just either half of the cable so there may even be some benefits.

If your cables have a network on them I personally would not want to short the network outputs. You would be adding those components/crossover in series with your cable.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Often HF and LF portions of the cable are different. One is optimized for the lower frequencies with thicker wires while the other keeps gauge above 18 to prevent skin effect. Combining different wires is beneficial - Audioquest does this inside of their biwired cables (they call it spread spectrum). Inexpensive Audioqest Indigo, I had once, has multiple runs of different wires in parallel for the low/midrange portion (different gauges and metal purities) and just one set of thin wires for the tweeter. My current cables Acoustic Zen Satori Shotgun have each portion of the shotgun optimized for intended frequency range (not identical). In spite of that their speakers are not biwired. Many companies (like Dynaudio or Acoustic Zen) don't believe in biwiring and their speakers have only one set of terminals. This should not stop me from getting Dynaudio speakers in future - I would be just sorry that I spend twice more for the shotgun. I would use both parts of the cable.
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