Biwiring (Again)

Having got 2 weeks left of my 3 weeks off work, curiosity has got the better of me. I am generally very happy with the sound of my system, but I read on Rotel's website, that they recommend biwiring as it increases the damping factor of the amp, and reduces resistance of the cables, giving the amp better control over the speaker.

Now its got me wondering. :lol:

I am tempted to try it, I would keep my Silver Anniversary for treble, but see little point in using the same cable for the bass, so I would like recommendations for cable costing no more than £6 / metre that would be a good choice for bass / lower midrange performance.

Cheers for any help or comments...

 

naim naca 5.. cheap and bassy... but you knew i was going to say that didn;t you?
cheers

julian

 

If you can use a power drill try my recipe for a cable that will improve your bass.

"Zero cost speaker cable [virtually]
or twist again like we did last summer!"

but use 1mm enammeled wire [polyeurathane coated] rather than the 0.7mm. This sholdn't cost you more than £12 tops. It will be stiff but offer 25% more copper than the 0.7mm version, and if youve bass in your system this ought to bring it out.

 

The Rotel site also comments about how you should use the same cable, a comment which is backed up by someone at HFC forum. Yet, somehow, this seems a bit pointless, does it not?

 

I don't understand your last comment?

 

It said you should use exactly the same cable for biwiring, rather than mixing different cable for treble and bass

 

paul,
whilst not an expert on this sort of thing. running another bit of wire to your speakers effectively decreases the resistance your amp sees (i think, someone... anyone...) which alters the sound of the amp / cable / speaker combination. as this is not the onlyt factor in sound it may be suggested the in order to keep the tonal balance (whatever that is) similar across bass and treble the smae type of cable should be used. however i can see your point about using a cable more inimicable to bass as the bass run and a good treble cable in the treble run. i suspect blagging home demo runs of cable and lots of trial and error are going to be the order of the day.

cheers


julian

 

Two weeks may not be long enough for this Paul.....

Cheers

 

Tim, do you biwire mate? What do u reckon of it. See, the last time I did it on the Cambridge amp and Wharfedales, it increased the airiness of the sound, and perhaps the detail, but killed the groove a bit.

Maybe it will be different on my current gear, which I have never biwired before, so I dont know...

 

Paul,

I have never done it, but I get the feeling that mixing 2 very different types of cable for biwiring will result in a rather incohesive sound. However, there is only one way to find out, and thats to experiment.

Cheers, Robbo

 

Lintone audio in the metrocentre lent me speaker cable on a few occasions. Some nice blokes there, but they may have left... it was about ten years ago.... christ, have I been a hifi nerd for ten years??!?! ooooh shit...

 

A-ha Chris, hi-fi nerd for only 10 years, not bad going, and not that I'm trying to out do you ... but .... I was 13 when I was replacing the smoothing caps in my relatively newly acquired Trio KA-4002 50p jumble sale special... , and learning the hard way that soldering irons take a significant time to dool down after they've been turned off ; which means I've been a*sing about with it for 17+ years (cos I had been running a Cambridge P50 amp before that, that had come from the same jumble sale ). I wonder now why I didn't just save all the money and buy a really good amp today for a quid (+ the interest of course ).

Paul

As for bi-wiring? Well I have done it, and the AV system is bi-wired (Gale XL-315 works better this way IME on most kit). The Kabers aren't bi-wired though (Isolda DCT is expensive!!!!), and to be fair, I don't think anything will touch the stuff unless spending stupid money (we have found something better in fact at twice the price with haggling etc.) bi-wired or not. WM was running his Isolda bi-wired but then he's a maniac .

Would I bother with bi-wiring? Probably not now, not unless the system was more revealing. With some cables it makes a definate improvement in some systems, but greater gains can be had elsewhere it seems so I'd spend the money on a single run of a good one. For the basis of your experiment though, why not try it. With QED SA, I expect that it may well be an improvement.

Even more interesting, is the fact that the Rotel spiel recommends it and their reasoning. You won't really half the resistance either, I don't know why they have said that. You might if you left the jumper bars in, but then that's hardly bi-wiring, more doubling up on th speaker cable (don't even contemplate trying this if you're bi-amping, unless you're tired of your amps and wish them a smokey grave). T'was written by a marketing man methinks.

Cheers

 

Hi

One reason bi wiring may work is that is offers a form of (star) earthing. Star earthing is when a component has it's own discrete return back to earth. Having bi wire cables can tend towards this. This would work well with simple crossovers where a separate earth from the treble goes to earth & a separate earth from the bass goes to earth.

It starts to fall down due to the layout of the crossover & the number of components. Total star earthing may mean loads of wires going back to the amp.

Star earthing & (star wiring) can improve resolution, detail and dynamics to a very good degree but things (circuits) get a lot more complex.


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