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Tannoy Speakers & Bi-wiring

I have a pair of Tannoy Canterbury speakers using Atma-Sphere amps. Currently I am using single wire (audience AU24) and the supplied brass jumper. Wondering what the experience of any Tannoy users out there is in bi-wiring and what kind of wires you have used. I'm thinking about trying this with a budget of about $1,000 used so really can't get into the mega expensive cables. Really curious.
redcarerra
mulveling's avatar
mulveling
2,190 posts
 
I have Canterbury SE, and bi-wire with Audioquest Mont Blanc low and KE-4 high. I really want to think cables are BS, but there is a modest improvement in resolution, clarity, and extension by running this bi-wire config vs. either cable alone (the jumpers used are either nice Acrolink or VdH; not junk). It's not a huge improvement, but I always end up going back to it, otherwise I'd happily sell either cable for their used market value.

That said, the retail value of comparable current cables is ludicrous. For anything near their the current retail prices, that money would be WAY better off invested anywhere else (e.g. phono stage, amp, vintage tubes, etc). For the prices I paid for these used cables a few years ago, they're a reasonable addition to my system.
pani
1,220 posts
 
Mulveling, the most fundamental rule of biwiring of passive speaker is to use the same wire for all the drivers, else the drivers will not be time aligned. Please read this:
http://www.vandersteen.com/pages/Answr7.htm
mulveling's avatar
mulveling
2,190 posts
 
Pani, that page does little to convince me of such a fundamental rule. There can be no impact on time alignment, even with cables of slightly differing lengths -- electronic signals are orders of magnitude faster than sound waves. My Tannoys are not actually time aligned, anyways.

Barring electrical mismatch, I'm skeptical there can be much impact on coherence -- if there was, then I'd have gone back to a single run. It's quite coherent sounding, as to be expected of a Tannoy. Next, look at the crossover adjustments on these Tannoys: you can modify 1.1kHz tweeter shelving, which I've had sound excellent in either 0.0 or +1.5dB positions. That's MUCH larger than the differences between any 2 reasonable cables. Yet the tweeter and woofer can still blend seamlessly in either configuration, as long as it's the right choice for the overall system balance. And then the tweeter/woofer drivers themselves couldn't possibly be more different (2" metal dome compression driver; 15" paper woofer), and yet they too blend beautifully. Again, these differences are far greater than those between cables, yet they don't preclude excellent coherence.
arj
68 posts
 
Tannoy prestige internal wiring is a combination of Oyaide (OHNO) and high purity silver for the crossovers
I would think getting the default jumper cables from Tannoy (i believe Oyaide) would be ideal.

I would love to try out a Biwire some day..but so far have stretched my budget to get a single wire..and would prefer a high quality single wire to lower quality Biwires .
pani
1,220 posts
 
Mulveling, I only tried to suggest you that you may want to avoid using different cable for biwiring because there is a reason. I am surprised that:

1. You say that your Tannoy is not time aligned. Its dual concentric driver is considered one of the best out there because they sound like a point source, due to their excellent time alignment.

2. You pointed out about the cross-over adjustment that Tannoy provides. You are confusing between frequency domain and time domain issues. Changing the crossover point on your Tannoy boosts some of the HF frequencies still keeps the time alignment intact because they are compensated accordingly in the crossover design by maintaining a smooth overlapping region. That plot is lost when you feed different sonic pattern to each driver (due to different wires) and expect the crossover to still keep a smooth overlap.

I have heard it very clearly when I tried it on my tri-wireable ATC speakers. Even though I heard tremendous clarity in individual segments, the speaker did not sound like one driver if I used different wires.
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