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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
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.
wellfed's avatar
wellfed
690 posts
 
My previous speakers benefited greatly from using ZERO autoformers. One pair sounded great, two pairs (bi-ZERO) were phenmomenal. I asked a noted cable designer why this would be so and he thought it was probably due to isolation of back-EMF.
garfish
1,840 posts
 
Re: Vandersteen Audio's speaker Owner's Manual(s): based on extensive testing, Vandersteen strongly recommends true bi-wiring with their speakers. I now use internal bi-wired cables by Synergistic Research and like them a lot-- the bass wire in these high purity copper cables is of heavier gauge than the mid/treble wire.

In order to achieve the best results in a true bi-wired setup (4 wires to each speaker), the individual wires must be separated by an inch or so over most of the run(s), and in a practical setting, this can be hard to do-- that's why I went to internal bi-wires. Cheers. Craig
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