Benefits and Drawbacks to Shotgun Speaker Cables

Buckingham, to answer your question, go to the Audioquest web site, and read their explanation of bi-wireing. This is is one of the best explanations I have seen.(you may have to search around since the site is a bit strange at first)They don't mention specifically shotgun but they will talk about the benifit of the added conductors and the seperation of electrical fields.It will take a bit of interpretation to apply this to "shotgun". I first tried "shotgun" before I new it was "shotgun" back in about 1981 with my then, Mogami speaker cable. It improved the sound in just about every way(it sounded more lifelike) with that wire. I can't say it will happen with every cable out there.

Here's my understanding, please educate me if I'm wrong:

Bi-wire = four conductors in one cable / speaker
Bi-cable = two conductors in two cables / speaker
Shotgun = four cables / speaker

I've tried all of them. If your speakers are truley bi-wireable (internally split crossovers, not just two sets of binding posts to one crossover) you will surely hear an improvement. Currently I'm running Transparent Super Bicable XL's (two - two conductor cables in one conduit, networked), but am looking to go Shotgun. That way I can utilize the multiple Ohm taps on my monoblocks, running 4-8 ohm to my tweeters and 2-4 ohm to my woofers (bi-wireable 2-way monitors).

Here is a link to a single run of Biwire Shotgun speaker cables. With this cable you would have 8 cables per speaker! I have a similar cable but it is not bi-wired. So it is 2 cables per red and 2 cables per black on each side, each ending in separate WBT banana terminations.

http://www.virtualdynamics.ca/referencespeakerlarge.jpg

Now that we've got that cleared up, running cables in shotgun fashion will DRASTICALLY alter their electrical characteristics. Any "special geometry" between the positive and negative conductors in the original design that was included to increase cable bandwidth ( such as braiding, twisting, etc...) is effectively negated when doing this. Inductance will go WAY up and series resistance should be reduced by half. In effect, we have doubled the gauge of conductors and increased the dielectric gap between the two polarities by a massive amount.

Since the resistance is lowered ( this is a good thing ), you might have better control over the drivers that produce the most reflected EMF ( electromotive force aka "voltage ) like woofers, etc... However, the increased inductance will produce greater roll-off and veiling of details as frequency rises. Dielectric absorption is also increased, as you've got twice as much insulator / cable jacket to work with.

The bottom line is that you'll probably experience warmer, tighter and more robust low frequency response with a softening of upper mids and treble response. One could somewhat "fine tune" the tonal balance of an arrangement like this by playing with the spacing or "gap" between the positive and negative cables. Some have used this to "smooth out" problems with digital glare or sibilance with great results.

Obviously, some speaker / amp / wire combo's would respond differently than others depending on the complex impedance that resulted. Results WILL vary from system to system and would be strictly a matter of personal taste. Sean
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