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Why bi-wiring is bad

From a link at the Chris Van-Haus website:
THE DISADVANTAGE WITH BI-WIRE

One thing that happens when you biwire your loudspeakers is that the input of the high- and the low-pass filters are fed with different input signals. The difference is a result of the high frequencies and the low frequencies being forced to travel different paths, perhaps through different types of cables, but under all circumstances through cables who have seen different loads (a tweeter with a high pass filter has a completely different impedance response compared to a woofer with a low pass filter!).

What happens is that the drivers will work less good together than when their filter halves were fed with equal signals. The result is a generation of more static and stochastic phase error sounds at different directions from the loudspeaker. The stochastic phase error sounds appear because there may be different types of unlinearities in the low- and high-frequency paths.

What does this sound like? Well, usually, just as you may expect from physics, it appears as a change in the reproduction of space and sound stage. Often, the first impression is that the "biwired" sound presents extended "dimensions", more "air", and is more "living". The impression after a week or month, however, is that all recordings sound very much alike, and the "airiness" appears on all records. It does not even sound like air anymore, instead more like a slime that pollutes every record you play. No wonder, since it is not a real, recorded quality but a "speaker characteristic" added to all reproduced material. "Sameness" is another word for it.

I just went back to bi-wiring over the weekend. The first thing I noticed was cymbal-like instruments shimmer much more. Secondly the bass now seemed to be less perhaps due to the greater high frequency information.
On orchestra music the orchestra is now well behind the speakers instead of right at the speaker. Like the article said, this may be a phase or time shift error and the depth may become wearing over time.
Finally there is slighlty better separation between instruments. It's easier to pick out each instrument.
cdc
2001impala's avatar
2001impala
102 posts
 
I have difficulty embracing this idea. As we all know electricity follows the path of least resistance. Thus, to suggest that it is "forced" seems to be no more than melodrama, the manner in which many people elect to prove the various versions of "The word of God" is a classic example of this.

I am curious, does anyone know of a speaker in which the cables are not split into four or six leads between the terninal and the crossover? Please explain the difference. Would not one bennifit, by bi-wiring, due to the fact creating different signal paths lowers the over all electro magnetic field in which various frequencies have to contend with (split between two cables).

However, correct me if I'm wrong. The point expressed about choosing to use different types of cables makes scents, because various cables tend to accentuate certain frequencies or sonic characteristics. Thus, your uotcome would be unusaully colored program material.

Please pardon my ignorance,

Damon
ericthered
29 posts
 
One might ask oneself why certain well-respected speaker manufacturers like Thiel and Dynaudio don't provide biwiring capabilities with their speakers when binding posts cost maybe 5 bucks each maximum. But don't ask me; I recently went from a single run of cheap Tara speaker cable to biwiring my Platinum Audio Solos with a run of AP Oval 12's and that's the biggest sonic difference I've heard in my rig in a long long time.
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
Bob is right. There is no right or wrong answer. Every system is different. The only difficulty to overcome is the belief that there is one right answer.
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ezmeralda11
303 posts
 
I'll just chime in off-hand, and not too technical (cause I don't know'em all and I'm tired). But alot of the biwiring hype is crap, I think. Alot of speakers feature dual binding posts simply as a selling point (fact) and most systems really don't stand to benefit from it. Personnally, Chris VanHaus nor Jon Risch are two not to get knowledge from (at least not without some many grains of salt). There are electrical changes that occur when biwiring (the stuff Risch babbles of), but in most systems when you run the calculations, the numbers are completely insignificant (just like the whole "high performance" cable issue itself in many ways). The cited intermodulation distortion in cables, I believe this is bending truth almost into a lie (it just doesn't happen), and LCR values rarely cause shifts of 1/20db, 1/10db is generous. And as others pointed out, biwiring isn't even an option if the system has a series xover (however, parallel xovers are by far the most popular).

That said, there are a few select circumstances where there is, may very well be some truth/benefit to biwiring--aka measurable and significant psychoacoustically. (I'm open to both sides) Half this comes from other sources a little more reputable giving somewhat scant mention in passing that the whole thing (biwiring) isn't ludicrous, the exact specifics I'm not completely sure of. The other half, I know, is with ESL's (not all though) and other speakers with demanding impedences curves in the high-freq., certain low impedence cables can correct deviations that may be in the neighborhood 3db with "standard" cable (so the high performance cables are a reality here, just with a single run). And extending that, if this was a two-way or more system composed of at least one transducer being ESL (although not necessarily) using a seperate run for the highs, esl, and lows, cone, it might stand to clean things up bwiring with "optimized cable". Its certainly one instance where I can actually see talk of optimizing a cable for a specific driver and being signficant in curing some distortions. ESL's have a little different electrical characteristics than "typical" cones in certain regards. But when Rish talks of it in a general hodgepodge way, I tune out--optimizing a cable to a 'normal' tweeter and 'normal' midwoof is an inaudible event. Even then the truth of the issue is I'm sure more obscure than that. I'm not even saying everyone with Martin-Logans are the few who stand to benefit from this (there's exceptions to the rules).

I guess my bottom line is, biwiring can benefit, but I don't know the specifics well enough--with most systems its not an issue (like 99% of'em). And this is all assuming your driving your system with a capable/well engineered amp. If you've got some of these tube amps, like the SET thing going with a damping factor of 1, or less, you'll run into serious problems (colorations) when the output impedence is greater than the speakers resistance I can't see coming to any conclusive improvements in sound with that much distortion. At that point even resistance is a big deal in cable. (Well engineered 'current drive' amps in a multi way (aka biamped, triamped) system is about the only time you want to experiment with output impedences being nearly equal to that of the driver).

To address the thread: I think he's just hypothesising about something he thinks he's hearing. Stochastic=random. I'm not into it. Not to mention, room colorations which can put a nice +/-2db speaker anechoic to real world performance of +/-7db, suddenly the cable is really really insignificant on alot of grounds.
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