bi wire,is there much point????????

im sure this has popped up from time to time but is there much point in using twice as much cable to bi wire if you only have one amp?

and especially if your amp only has one set of speaker outs?


orrrrrr, would you be better off buying one run of cable per speaker (you will have twice the amount to spend) and either splitting it at the speaker and running it into all four binding posts or getting some quality patch cables?

 

No improvement whatsoever in my experience, in fact it was fractionally worse, but now I use active speakers I don't have to worry about it. Which is nice.

-- Ian

 

Agreed. I had it as a sort of part-way house to active speakers and I didn't notice any difference. Bi-amping (separate amplifiers for high and low frequency drivers), the stage immediately prior to active, also wasn't anything to write home about. Now active, that's something else again...

 

Well, I'm finding myself in agreement here, after reassesing my speaker cable situation, I've plumped for single runs with a pair of matching 6" jumpers, and the results are well quite ear opening WM

 

My speakers (Dynaudio Contour 1.3MkII) only have single terminals so I don't have to worry about it. IMO it's a load of bollox. When I had bi-wirable speakers I tried it and it was not a lot different. Fractionally worse in fact, to copy what Ian said

When I see letters to What HiFi? asking if they can "modify" their Sonus Fabers or Dynaudios so they can be bi-wired to get the "huge improvement" that WHF keep going on about it makes me cringe and furious at the same time. Now do you see what you've done you idiots at WHF?? :bub:

Michael.

 

Birewiring on my system has just made the bass to boomy, I will be getting rid of my birewire XL315-2 soon to replace it with XL315, the standard version as less cross talk. Maybe I can stretch to some £5 a metre stuff.

 

Has anyone with bi-wiring experimented with mono-wiring using the same two cables?

Easy to do by putting the link back or better still, using a jumper lead btween the LF and HF terminals of the speakers.

 

Biwiring only sounds better cos those gold plated jumpers usually sound like shite. Replace them with decent cables and biwiring is then only deleterious.

Good to see that W.M has seen the light on this score

 

My cable comes in kit form, so I was able to experiment with biwiring in my setup.

In short, biwiring does make a difference in my system. Here, biwiring made the sound more extended in both frequency ends. On the other hand single-wiring sounded a bit more coherent.

At the moment my speakers are single-wired, but there was no clear winner.

I must confess that I'm a bit bothered by the strong conviction shown by some folks with (apparently) limited experience on this matter.

Joongul

 

If bi-wiring and bi-amping don't work, then why do speaker manufacturers keep on producing speakers with two terminals?

These approaches may not make any difference with some speaker designs but not all of them . The B&W 602s and some models of Mission at least benefit from this.

Tones, if you'd give me the privilege of hearing your explanation, what do you mean by bi-amping is the stage immediately prior to active? I've read about this a couple of times before but I'm afraid I haven't understood it yet


regards

 

I tried biwiring recently for the first time on my Missions. I noticed absolutley no difference whatsoever.

 

osama,
it's obviously a conspiracy between the cable and speaker manufacturers.
i'm messing about with bi-amping at the moment and yes the sound has changed, for the better? dunno yet.
cheers


julian

 

i dont think i will be bi wiring my speakers then....

personally i dont see the point unless you have two amps.i will agree with using quality jumper cables though, you only need one cable to get the signal to the speakers unlesss.......

what if you used a different cable for the hf from the one you use for the lf?

if your speakers sound bright say in the highs then you could use a different cable to tone them down.and i guess it works the other way around as well.silver and copper being the two cable types that spring to mind, silver tending to sound a bit brighter than copper.




cheers,





Rob.

 

Agree with all the points here

I had Kimber 8TC/4TC biwire and tried it in single wire mode with custom jumpers. More natural and together to my ears, but differences were incredibly small. Get a better single wire and some jumpers.

Just one caveat. Some speakers do react well to bi wiring, previous models I have owned did show marked improvements in some areas when given seperate feeds. So, as ever, it's system dependent, but I reckon you will get greater improvements from buying a superior cable in the first place.

 

Osama,

I think what Tones calls bi-amping is a passive bi-amping, where tweeters and woofers are driven by separate amps but the speaker's own crossover unit is used.

As merlin says, benefit of bi-wiring/passive bi-amping/active bi-amping etc. depends heavily on the system. Neat recommends passive bi-amping in preference of active for their speakers, for instance.

Joongul

 

I used to biwire when I had other kit, it made totally no difference, but as a younger lad I obviously felt more important and special having two runs of cable, I think this is what the wire manufacturers like to play on, because lets be honest that can't be any reason why it would have any effect, other than ion my case eventually buggering the spoeaker posts on my amp.

Bloody pointless.

 

BI-Wiring seems to be a marketing trick to get people to upgrade your speakers just because it has bi-wire terminals. It also makes cheaper budget models look better.

 

here is an interesting article by John Dunlavy that challenges the myths that are propagated by some of the cable pushers.

http://www.verber.com/mark/cables.html

I hope RA and his cult followers will also read this article.

 

bi-wiring doesn't work but biamping certainly does, with tighter more controlled bass.

 

KEF Reference 207s has 3 pairs of terminals at the back!

Great opportunity here for TRI-amping (with SIX mono-blocks even) or TRI-wiring!

Yum! Yum!