2 runs of wires or 1 run w/ jumpers

03-24-15: Zd542
Not true. There is an electrical difference. Also, on a speaker that is very sensitive to biwiring like my Vandersteen's, I can tell 100% of the time in a blind test. The difference is so big, its like swapping a component.

I'm curious Zd542 if you are comparing apples with apples. By this I mean are you comparing (2) $1000 cables to (1) $2000 cables?

I was big on bi-wiring years ago, but as I started using more and more exotic cables, my sound got better and better. However, the prices are so high that I can no longer afford to bi-wire. I am much happier with the single run and a high quality jumper than I ever enjoyed with lesser wires in bi-wire format.

Obviously, YMMV.

03-24-15: Soix
The only physical advantage I've heard in doubling the cable is a decrease in capacitance, which in theory should be a positive but I've no idea if it's enough to be meaningful or if it may have anything to do with the differences I hear in my system.

A technical correction to Soix's otherwise excellent post: Doubling the cable will double the capacitance, everything else being equal. That is true for both a shotgun configuration (both runs paralleled, i.e., connected to either the same or different speaker terminals but with the jumpers in place), and for a biwire configuration (the two runs to separate speaker terminals for the high and low frequency sections of the speaker, with the jumpers removed).

Doubling the cable in a shotgun (parallel) configuration will cut resistance and inductance in half, which may be marginally beneficial if speaker impedance is low, or if the gauge of the cable is narrow (as it tends to be with many silver cables), or if the length of the cable is long.

Doubling the cable via a biwire configuration will not affect resistance or inductance significantly, everything else being equal, aside perhaps to a minor degree at frequencies that are in the crossover region. What it is alleged to do is to reduce interaction between drivers. Some would also allege that it audibly reduces interaction between high and low frequency currents within the cable. See the paper linked to in the post by Tls49 here, and my subsequent comments on it.

Regarding the specific question, with a 7 foot length of 9 gauge Anti-Cables Level 3, and with most and probably nearly all speakers and amplifiers, while I would not totally rule out the possibility I would not count on either biwiring or shotgunning as being likely to provide any benefit.

Regards,
-- Al

Oops. Thanks Al. Interesting post as usual. It is indeed resistance I was trying to get at but failed miserably.

Without prejudice to the effects that the absolute benefits are always system dependent, a large chunk of the high-end quality build brands are moving away from bi-wiring in favour of shotgunned runs and jumpers.

Biamping ... Different story.

E.g. NORDOST

http://www.nordost.com/downloads/NorseJ ... ctions.pdf

CHORD

http://www.chord.co.uk/help-and-informa ... ngle-wire/

".... Many hi-fi and home cinema loudspeakers have two pairs of binding posts. This allows the speaker to be either bi-wired using two sets of loudspeaker cable or bi-amped using two amplifiers.

As a general rule (and there will always be exceptions) we tend to find that bi-wiring will open out the sound stage and increase perceived levels of detail. However, single wiring will often sound the most musically coherent. There is also an issue with single and bi-wire speaker cables. In all the research we have carried out, a single wire speaker cable out-performs a bi-wire cable of equivalent cost. This makes a lot of sense; the single wire speaker cable has two high quality conductors and the bi-wire cable requires four. So for a given budget, we believe that a single wire cable will always out-perform the equivalent bi-wire cable, so much so that we no longer produce dedicated bi-wire cables..."

For me, shotgunned NORDOST Freys with matched FREY jumpers bested all comers , single, biwire or bi-amped . - full stop. The differences were not subtle.------

On a related topic - has anyone found any benefits, i.e. when using a single cable + wire jumper links, of "diagonal wiring"?

i.e.
- the neutral of speaker cable is attached to the bass set of terminals
- the signal (or +ve)is connected to the mid/treble terminals
- or the other way around.

Thanks