Bi-Wiring

Hello all!

Since this is my first post, let me just quickly introduce myself. My name is Gerben, 23 years old and a full-time history student in Amsterdam. Besides studying I work part-time at a national radiostation here in Holland that plays alternative dance and rock music (which also covers my taste in music).

My system:
Rotel RA-01 amp
Rotel RCD-02 cd-player
B&W 602 S3 speakers
Beyerdynamic DT-880 headphones

VDH CS-122 speaker cable
VDH 102 MKIII interconnect

Now....over to my question....I'm thinking of buying another pair of VDH CS-122 speakercable to bi-wire. Will that make a difference in the sound? I'm not all that dissatisfied with the sound I have now but I think the highs could be a little less upfront and the mids and lows could be a bit better.

Speaker placement is not an option because I already have them on stand and moved them around a bit and this is the best I can get from then single-wired.

Thanx in advance!
Gerben

 

Try single wiring connecting directly to the bass terminals instead of the treble terminals first (assuming of course that you have them connected to the treble terminals in the first place).

I think those speakers will always sound bright with the Rotels as they are naturally quite bright speakers anyway and the Rotels are not exactly the last word in warmth.

Biwiring may make a slight improvement, but when I tried it on mine, I was hard pressed to notice any difference at all.

 

Don't waste your money......(ducks for cover)
I use B&W 602s and yes they are brightish. I tried loads of different cables both bi-wired and single wired. I settled for QED SA single wired (again quite bright ) I personally did notice a very very very slight difference with bi-wiring but found I prefered the single wired sound - not sure why but felt that it was more musical. (also cheeper!)
If you are single wiring make sure that you use a jumper wire of the same cable as the rest of the speaker cable rather than the supplied brass/copper things.
I think your may problem is the combination of Rotel and B&W. You may be able to tame this with different cabling but essentially all that is happening when you do this is that you are cutting something out of the signal.
Donut

 

Goeden Avond Gerben,

Welcome to the forum!

I would not recommend biwiring at this stage. when trying to improve the sound I thing it is always better to start at the front end and sort out your mains. Beleve it or not, crap mains causes exactly the kind of symptoms you describe. Before doing anything, I would get some decent power cables for the CD player and then the amp. a Eupen power cable performs very well and is not that expensive (around £50). You will then find that the hardness in the sound is reduced, bass is deeper and there is loads more detail.

Many vendors will let you have power cables for an evaluation period and if you are not satisfied, you can return them for a full refund. Audusa sells eupen cable.

http://www.audusa.com/main.htm

Cheers, Robbo

 

The Eupen cable made little difference on my RA-01 (if any), but it did make a bit of a difference to my Cambridge DAC3, so you may want to try one on the CD player, and you can always try it out on the amp also.

However it didnt really tame any brightness on the DAC3 though, but it increased the bass a little, which I guess may make it sound a little less bright.

 

I had a problem with boominess on my speakers so I changed the birwire to single wire and it solved the problem. I think biwiring is probably good in some cirmumstances but its mostly just an advertising con used in low budget speakers to try and get people to buy a new pair of speakers just because it can be birwired.

 

I actually found Bi-Wiring made quite a noticeable difference to the soundstage and airyness of my system. That is, it increased both as compared to single wire. Also it opens the ability to Bi-amp!

Anyway getting to the point, is there a good mains cable I could order from Maplin, RS-Components, or somewhere and then just attach a decent plug on it? I just can't bring myself to spend £50 on it

Thanx,

 

Hiya

In my experience I think you'll get the opposite of what you want - more noticeable and defined treble.

If you want the treble to be LESS prominent I definately wouldnt bi-wire.

I also think it gives music a disjointed quality that I dont like, but not everyone agrees of course.

I'd try experimenting with different single runs of speaker cable. Try a solid core cable like DNM, or goertz/townshend/electrofluidics. I think these last ones especially will give you a nice improvement.

You've gotta try it though matey.
Chris

 

I'd like somebody to explain to me how bi-wiring can improve the audio quality of your system, and how effectively they can tell the difference in blind testing.

Single wires with jumpers, or Bi-wiring with no jumpers, its exactly the same circuit.

 

Single wiring - with short lengths of the same wire in place of the jumpers will deliver superior musicality over bi-wiring. The latter is apparently better than single wiring only because the gold-plated jumper bars sound like shit.

One run of good cable is better than two runs of less good cable.

The humble Naim Naca5 cable @J7/m works well with Rotel gear.

Why do cheapie JM Lab speakers come fitted with bi-wire terminals, and yet their more expensive Utopia speakers don't?

My own speakers (Rega Naos) have two sets of terminals, but this is because Rega recommend bi-amping not bi-wiring.

Mine are single-wired as advised by Rega themselves. Yeah you get more airy-spacey nonesense bi-wiring them, but they play music better single wired.

 

Did you condider the series inductance of the cable? Some of the lunatic fringe cables have a series inductance of 2microH/m...

 

I am not sure about the suggestions being made here about going for better cables. IMO a better cable is going to let more of everything through, including the brightness. Deal with the likely cause of the brightness at source and then get better components downstream at a later date. Source first every time.

Just my opinion.

 

Come on mate, thats only the price of a few CDs If you bought cables from RS, they would be unlikely to be rf attenuating like the eupen, and also you would have to spend £30 to get the same quality plugs, so it really isnt worth it.

 

Yes, and the difference is negligible, certainly not enough to have any audible effect. I bet if I bi-wired my system I would hear a difference, but with a blindfold on, and somebody swapping the wiring setup, no way would I be able to say which was which.

 

Cough, splutter... not when it's 2microH/M - with a 5M length you get a 2.4dB droop at 20KHz... into a 4Ohm load.

That said, I'll agree that if your using low series-inductance cable, bi-wiring is a waste of time.

 

And can you actually hear 20KHz? Not a chance. I seriously doubt you can even hear above 15KHz. On the other hand, if you know any babies or young toddlers who are into hifi, maybe you could ask their opinion.

As I said, negligible.

 

Well, I can certainly hear 10Khz. And with the cable I quoted, the drop is 1.2dB @10K. This isn't negligible. In practice people can hear changes of 0.3dB... It's why DBT's are carefully level matched to within 0.1dB.

 

Okay guys...first of all: thanx for all the tips! I'm buying a s/h mains lead for my cd-player tomorrow and I decided against Bi-Wiring. I replaced the copper jumpers with CS-122, but that seemed to make the treble only more harsh.

I think the only solution is buying other standmount speakers...and this time NO B&W's!!!

Any advice on a speaker pair around 600 EURO??

Maybe Dynaudio?

 

Some speakers have crossovers that are designed with biwiring in mind (or so I've read), so maybe it'd make a difference with these..? Other than that, seems like a gimick to me... Many of the best speaker designers in the world say it's a load of crap, and many of the speaker designers that do include double binding posts simply do so to pander to popular demand.

Dunc

 

Start here:
https://www.audio-forums.com/as-rediect/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1895

There was a previous thread too, but that turned into a right slanging match, after I used the word <expletive deleted>