bi-wire vs jumpers

All very good questions B_limo, and you will get many varied responses I think. From my personal experience, I always felt that running a single run of the best cable I could afford was a better way to go than to split my cable budget in half to bi-wire.

That being said, I am currently bi-wiring again right now, mostly because my current speaker manufacturer recommends bi-wiring. To be honest, I can't really say that it is an improvement. To be fair, I haven't directly compared my bi-wire run of speaker cable to the same manufacturer/model single wire run. So while I have heard differences with the newer cables, my guess is that is more due to the different cable materials and design than it is to the bi-wiring methodology. The differences I have heard have been split into positive and negative differences.

B_limo, in response to your questions above I would just add to Jmcgrogan2's always reliable comments that biwiring does not split the power in half. The total amount of power supplied by the amplifier, and the fraction of that power which goes to the low frequency part of the speaker, and the fraction of that power which goes to the high frequency part of the speaker, will all be virtually the same in a biwired configuration as in a single wired configuration.

The reasons biwiring may make a difference are much more subtle, and explanations tend to be speculative to some degree. The one certainty, though, seems to be that the only way to tell what kind of difference it will make in a given system, if any, is to try it in that system.

Best regards,
-- Al

IMHO bi-wire, or shotgun is pointless. I cannot see how running multiple speaker cables from the same amp can improve the sound.

I have heard from more then 1 speaker designer that they think it is BS but they do provide the option since it is what the market wants.

The only way I can see the multi amping/multi wiring will work is in an active system.

Mordante, if the current for all frequencies flows in a common cable, magnetic fields are generated by the current for all frequencies. As a result, the relatively large current in the bass can modulate the higher frequencies.

Typically, the high-pass crossover has high impedance at low frequencies. In a biwire connection, the cable to those drivers will have little to no current flow of bass frequencies and with that, there will be little or no modulation of the higher frequencies.

Of course, if the speaker designer doesn't implement high-pass crossovers with high impedance in the excluded low frequencies, this benefit won't be realized.