Has biwire speaker cabling become "old" ?

When one's system reaches a certain level of transparency, running your speakers bi-wired is worthwhile. This means not only are your components compatible with each other, EMI/RF is not a major problem, system cabling is off the floor and neither coiled nor bundled, racking and support are sturdy, contacts are clean, clean AC power is available, the room isn't plagued with standing waves anymore, and lots of other little things that have a bigger impact collectively have already been addressed. Until then, you will probably be disappointed with the return for bi-wiring.

I have been bi-wiring for 25 years after hearing how much better everything sounded. I economized on speaker cable by setting my amps back-to-back with the speaker terminals and bought the best possible wire in the shortest possible lengths. I started with Cardas Hexseries that ran about $2500 for 2 1/2 meter pairs. These ran between Atma_sphere 100w OTLs and a pair of Snell B-types. They end in Rhodium plated spade lugs. The Binding posts on the speakers and amps had been upgraded to Edison Price. The system had very good analog sources over the years and sounded outstanding to me all that time, But, I could never hear the difference when I experimented with things like running only one speaker cable, until after I had retired and could only afford relatively cheap tweeks and changes to the system. It was only after I had cleaned up some of the nasties I listed above that the system became transparent enough to show that bi-wiring is best.

I retired the Cardas cables two years ago in favor of a really superb 1m biwire set of flat solid silver ribbon biwire cables from Ridge Street Audio. These are designed to maximize sound purity through simplicity in design. They are designed so that the bass leg is significantly larger than the one for the mids and highs.

Unfortunately, due to a recent speaker upgrade - I retired the Snells this Winter with a pair of Genesis 6.1. The new speakers are meant to be run full-range from a single set of binding posts. The best sound is said by the manufacturer to come from letting the speaker's electronics split the highs from the speaker cable rather than running an RCA or balanced interconnect. So, I have now put another superb set of cables on the back shelf.

I'm here to learn. Thanks for the info, although most posts were off topic. I thought the purpose of biwiring on the speaker end was to improve crossover performance. I have four year old Chord Rumour biwires with four conductors each.
It seemed that a quick low budget upgrade to the entire system in front of the speakers would be a speaker cable upgrade, such as to Chord Odyssey or perhaps entry Cardas or
Nordost. I was surprised to see that Odyssey and Rumour are now two strand only at Chord. They say better results are gotten with jumpers. A quick check of online retailers does not show one instance of Nordost Leif Series being offered in biwire even though these cables have multiple conductors. Cardas is hit and miss with offering biwire.
So, is this lack biwire availability a cost cutter or a result of evidence that biwire (and bi-terminal speakers) is ineffective, that it was/is a cosmetic trend only ?

Last year Nordost stopped offering internal biwire, stating it was too sonically compromised, and instead offered an increased range of jumpers for biwire.

My perception has been that anecdotal reports which have appeared here and elsewhere about biwiring are highly inconsistent. Some report substantial benefits, some report no difference, and some report significantly degraded sonics.

As examples of the latter, in this thread and this one three different people reported significant perceived (and in one case measured) loss of bass when biwiring. I offered a hypothesis in those threads as to why that might have been, but one which was speculative and perhaps not able to account for the degree of the reported effects.

In any event, as is often the case in audio the question of biwiring seems to be system and listener dependent, and to not have a great deal of predictability. FWIW, I'll note that the designer of my present speakers, the generally highly regarded and certainly not inexpensive Daedalus Ulysses, has chosen to provide them with just a single pair of terminals.

Regards,
-- Al

So, is this lack biwire availability a cost cutter or a result of evidence that biwire (and bi-terminal speakers) is ineffective, that it was/is a cosmetic trend only ?

No real answer, but a lot of opinions. IMHO, the best answer and I quote well respected poster, Almarg,

"It may or may not make a difference. If it makes a difference, it may or may not be for the better."

Some manufacturers specifically design their speakers to be biwired, and others have just added the connections as a means of "audio fashion".

IME, I achieved better results with single wire and jumpers as opposed to biwire, and as I was trying the options, I found this article that seem to describe the difference I was hearing.

BI-WIRE, NOT ONLY AN ADVANTAGE

Bottom line is you try different configurations, and go with what you like.