Speaker wire and Bi-wiring

[docbob52]

Maybe I don't have golden ears, but I can tell little difference between speaker wire types no matter how expensive and also those that are bi-wired over ip cord or the equivalent.   It is interesting that most of my electrical engineering friends say the same.  From what I can tell, different wiring is just placing a slightly different impedance into the the system and thus making the wire a small tone control.  Bruce Rosenblit of Transcendent Sound explains convincingly that the only advantage of bi-wiring is for the venders of bi-wire.  George Short, of Northcreek Music Systems ( who was an engineer at Acoustic Research and Apogee Acoustics) makes a good case for bi-wiring, however.

Let me here of your experiences. 

[earwaxxer]

Bi-wiring makes sense to me due to the reverse EMF from the woofers etc. I havent had cone speakers for awhile so I havent any real experience with it. Just like anything else, we have to try it and see. IMO wire makes a difference in sound in many ways. Its something you have to tune, just like caps, tubes, amps etc.

[Paul Birkeland]

If you bi wire, you can generally remove a few large chunks of gold plated brass from between your speaker posts.

Speaker wire and interconnects have more dimensionality than just resistance, it's determining what all those dimensions might be that's the real kicker.

-PB

[Grainger49]

I was using zip cord for my speakers.  So one day a buddy, Doug, said, "Why don't you bi-wire?  Your speakers have the posts for it."

I cut the zip wire in half and did it.  I think it sounded a little better. 

It was more work to go back so it stayed.  Then I bi-wired with marine wire, then silver wire.  And with the Orcas I'm back to mono wire.

[corndog71]

Maybe I don't have golden ears, but I can tell little difference between speaker wire types no matter how expensive and also those that are bi-wired over ip cord or the equivalent.   It is interesting that most of my electrical engineering friends say the same.  From what I can tell, different wiring is just placing a slightly different impedance into the the system and thus making the wire a small tone control.  Bruce Rosenblit of Transcendent Sound explains convincingly that the only advantage of bi-wiring is for the venders of bi-wire.  George Short, of Northcreek Music Systems ( who was an engineer at Acoustic Research and Apogee Acoustics) makes a good case for bi-wiring, however.

Let me here of your experiences.

What brands/types of speaker wire have you tried?

I use to play with biwiring but ultimately found it never justified the additional cable and cost.  I would just make jumpers using the same speaker wire.  Now none of my speakers even have biwire connections as the designer doesn't believe in it.

[earwaxxer]

I would tend to agree, that the cost would be prohibitive. Now biamping, that's another animal all together

[KevO]

Years ago I bi-wired my Vandersteen II and it was highly encouraged by Vandersteen. I couldn't perceive any difference.

Currently I am quad-wired, but out of necessity. Linkwitz Orions have an active crossover and use 8 amplifiers. One per driver.

The cables are one piece, 8 conductors with 4 banana plugs for the amps and a Neutrik 8 pin Speak-on connecting to the speaker.

Kevin

[Clark B.]

We use biwiring in the speaker systems we manufacture to serve as the inputs into our subwoofer amplifiers.  It works pretty well, and does not affect the dynamics of the fullrange speaker in the least.  But only a tiny bit of the speaker level signal needs to be sampled for the sub amp's high level inputs...

http://blumensteinaudio.com/cables/

As for the biwiring of passively crossovered speakers, I can say that the difference was miniscule on my old paradigms as I definitely tried it.  It smacked me as a ploy to increase the profits of speaker cable companies.

Cheers!

-Clark