2. speakers
  3. 985563374

TEACH ME ABOUT BI-WIRE

I see a lot mentioned about bi-wiring. I am not familar with this. I know you must have speakers that can be bi-wired and they are configured for bi-wire by removing a buss bar to seperate speakers and/or crossovers within the cabinet. I have also read that you need to have an amp that has bi-wire capability (two left and two right speakers outputs - and not to be confused with speakers A & B).

Can someone explain what takes place within each speaker when it is set up for bi-wiring? What are the advantages and disadvantages if any? What if my amp only has one set of left and right speakers outputs (but has something called loops for additional amps), Can you accomplish bi-wiring if you had two amps? If so how would it work?
sfrounds
megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
I disagree with almost everything Jostler, Stevemj have posted here, and so do the majority of high end speaker manufacturers, but they are entitled to their opinions.

The actual mechanics of bi-wiring, and special design of seperate crossovers that control what signal travels down each cable are covered in detail on many differnt web sites.

The only question to the customer is do the benefits of bi-wiring overcome the additional cost involved with two sets of cable. Or another way of putting it is do two sets of $500 cable sound better than one set of $1000 cable.
paulwp
585 posts
 
Hey Sedond, try leaving the jumpers in place (be very careful not to cross plus and minus), or as Jon Risch suggested in another forum, just the jumper for the "negative" side. First, if the sound is the same with both jumpers in, I would assume biwiring has no effect other than more wire. Second if the sound is better with one jumper left in, then you have a cheap tweak upgrade. Might be worse though, people have reported different results.
sedond
1,387 posts
 
paulwp, if i unnerstand ya correctly, i should try the yumpers *and* biwiring at the same time? and, yust yumper the negative while biwiring? as i'm currently using only one amp, - i traded my electrocompaniet aw100 for an aw75 to match my existing aw75, & it's not here yet - i can try this...

doug s.

paulwp
585 posts
 
Yes, try connecting wires to both sets of terminals and leave the jumpers in (belt and suspenders), and compare the sound to biwiring without the jumpers. If biwiring makes sense, I think (and as everyone knows, I could be wrong about this) you should prefer the sound without the jumpers. The second suggestion is a "tweak" recommended by Jon Risch, who says that in some systems, people have reported better sound (I dont know in what way) from connecting just the negative jumper or shorting strap. I never could figure out what that meant for me because with my preamp I have to reverse the cables.
70242241e18c
81 posts
 
Sedond, regarding bi-wiring: if your speaker's crossover network isn't enough to isolate the tweeter from the woofer, why would some extra wire be enough?
More to discover