I am stunned


After reading these forums for awhile I can finally say that I am a skeptic no longer with respect to biwiring. I recently purchased a demo pair of Martin Logans from a local dealer and found that I did not have enough money to purchase a decent set of speaker cables. As I was getting ready to take the speakers home the dealer stopped me and offered to loan me a set of cables until I had enough cash (Great Dealer!!!) to purchase some cables. Well, when I got home I discovered that the Logans were easily biwirable and that the cables he lent me were biwire cables. When I auditioned the Logans the dealer must have connected the jumpers when I told him I was not interested in biwiring a set of speakers. I figured what the hell, lets give it a try. I connected everything up, popped in a CD and my mouth fell to the floor. Unbelievable. So from one ex-skeptic to anyone who has a doubt. Biwiring works, I am an EE and frankly do not care why anymore.
liguy
Leafs, I recieved your email but I will attempt to answer you here so everyone can participate. I will attempt to answer each one of your questions but I warn you as you may not like some of the answers. First some background. I graduated with a BSEE from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1976. That is all you need to know about my technical background so let me start answering some questions for you. If you read my origional post carefully you would see that I have a good relationship with my dealer who I have dealt with throughout the years. After all, he lent me cables until I have the money to buy some. He did not have to do that. Since I have this relationship can you guess where I bought all of my audio equipment and can you guess what I auditioned the speakers with. If you read my other posts you would have seen that in the store the speakers had a single wire and the biwire jumpers in. I can tell you that my dealer's room has been specifically designed for sound. He wouldn't be in business long if the equipment he sold sounded lousy in his own establishment. I can also tell you my living room is just that: "a living room". It is not, and will never, have the acoustics of an auditioning room at a audio dealer. With all of this information I can safely say it was the biwiring. Redkiwi was correct in his acessment that I heard something that I thought was tremendous and wanted to share it. I also wanted to share, that as an engineer I was not tempted to try and understand why but only enjoy what I had heard. So there you have it. If it was not scientific enough for you Mr. Leafs, sorry that is just too bad. I am not, under any circumstances going to let you prevent me from enjoying what I heard that evening. If it bothers you so much you figure out why it sounded better.
Garfish: I was discussing cable in general with Pierre at Mapleshade and got the impression that it is most important to space the channels from each other and not the highs from the lows on one channel (I did this as we were talking on the phone and bingo, much more open sound - boy he/Pierre has a lot of patience). Your situation makes perfect sense, except I never did try spacing the high and the lows as you did. I wish that I would have played around with it more when I had the bi-wire setup, but there is always the next time. And, Liguy, if you are bowled over with your current setup then good for you. As I said above I would be hesitant to touch/move anything. My system has been off since I demoed some wire a friend brought over two weeks ago (the center image moved to the left) and I have not been able to set it right. I am wondering now if I might have damaged my micro wire IC and will switch it out next.
Liguy,I am very very happy for you.You are happy with the sound .You still have not told us if you have tried single wire with jumper at home.Only then can you say biwiring is better.So dont get me wrong.I am so happy for your results.I just dont want you to mislead others.
I went from BI to single wire with my set up at home and single wire is better.
liguy, i too, prefer bi-wire to single wire in my set-up. but, i've tried it both ways. (now that i'm running an identical pair of electrocompaniet amps in a vertically biamped set-up, i can say, that in my system, at least, this is *really* the way to go!) i'd really be interested in your reaction to using these same speaker wires, doubled-up to one speaker jack, w/the jumpers in place. you have everything there at your disposal, it would take you only a few minutes, at most, to make the change.

don't get me wrong - i'm sure your set-up in your home is great, & i'm also sure your dealer has an excellent demo set-up. but, i have to side w/those who feel that moving speakers from one room to another, w/who-knows-what different electronics/cabling, will introduce far more change/variables to the sonics, than yust the fact that the speaker wiring was changed from single-wire set-up to bi-wire set-up. are these even the same brand of wire that were used when at the dealers?

regards, doug s.

Ladies and Gents, sorry about the delay. I was on a small business trip. I have, at the prodding of many of you who have posted in this thread, tried putting the jumpers back in and just connecting one set of wires. So here is the verdict. It still sounds great! But not as good as with the speakers fully Biwired. Even though the Martin Logans are not known for their bass, the bass is much, much tighter with the speakers biwired. So there ya have it! I am still very happy with the new speakers and my system in general. I want to thank everyone who responded. Oh...Doug, where ever you are, for you, I will try lintening to a tuna also :-)