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To biwire or not to biwire...?

I know there have been a few threads on this subject and it is a fairly controversial subject, but I have a few specific questions on both ways. First, there are dealers who advertise their jumpers by saying," get rid of those junky bars that come with your speakers and hear what your speakers are really capable of..." For that distance of an inch or two, does it really make a difference ? Secondly,some dealers and /or manufacturers who push the biwire method, recommend putting copper cables on the bass and silver on the tweeter. How does this make things better ? Thirdly, for those with biwireable speakers,who want to run a single cable and put in a jumper,what kinds of experiences have you had with different types of jumpers ? I have a single pair of speaker cables ( AZ Satori) and another brand of cables that tend to lean toward the "warm" side of neutral.If I put in some good silver jumpers, would that give a more neutral tonal balance or would it only emphasize the upper registers ? I have yet to find any all- silver cables that I found natural-sounding anyway.Or would it be better to use a jumper from the same manufacturer as the single run you are using ? I know these are a lot of questions, but surely others without the technical know-how like myself have wondered about these things as well. Thanks for your input.
sherod
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ncarv
983 posts
 
I am currently bi-wiring after single wiring with brass plates and with jumpers. Jumpers are definitely better than the brass plates, not for the distance, but for the quality of the connection. Think about it -- after buying quality speaker cable, why would you want to complete the connection with crappy brass plates? I've used the Dedicated Audio jumpers and Transparent Reference jumpers, with the Transparents coming out ahead.
As for bi-wiring, I've heard both sides. I think it is probably system and speaker dependent and I would agree that a single cable of superior quality would probably outdo much lesser quality bi-wiring. In my case, bi-wiring improved the sound significantly. I'm using an older top of the line MIT speaker cable for the highs and a much lesser MIT of the same vintage, but similar construction, for the lows.
ljgj
955 posts
 
I wouldn't lose any sleep over jumpers. Some of the same people who will give extensive views on such items also use splitters when biamping and never comment on the regular copper wire inside the unit. Worry about something else.
eagle
154 posts
 
My amplifier has two pairs of binding posts for both channels and I have used two pairs of both Cardas Neutral Ref and Satori with similar results. The next phase was to a single run of Satori and jumpers. Now I have a single run of Audience Au24 and use their hook up wire in twisted pairs for jumpers, the Au15 (18 ga.).
Unless I went to an active crossover with bi-amplification, I would not go back to bi-wiring. Even though Audience offers bi-wire speaker cables, they do not recommend them in most cases and provide this link on their website:
http://www.sonicdesign.se/biwire.html
I don't miss the unnatural airy sound which was the bi-wire signature on all recordings in my system.
matt8268
92 posts
 
I can tell you with my setup, I noticed an improvement with biwiring. While it actually sounded the same as single wiring upon first comparison at moderate to loud volume, both a friend and I noticed that our ears hurt with the single wire but not with the biwire. Only thing I can come up with is that the bass can pull more current from the amp without also feeding that same extra current through the treble (which was what was hurting our ears). Not sure if this theory holds ground (pardon the pun) electrically.

Keep in mind this test was done on my fairly low-fi system. I currently have a Denon AVR1700 receiver powering Joseph Audio RM22si signature speakers with 2 separate runs of Kimber 4TC.
imin2u
392 posts
 
I currently bi-wire and I definitely reap the benefits of a more controlled low-end and a more defined high-end. Just try it.
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