Bi-wiring...tell me more

I biwired my my new system and the sound stage was clearly better. I think a lot depends on the manufacturer. If Dynaudio doesn't believe its design will benefit from biwiring then they know more about their speakers than anyone else and its a reasonable approach. I spoke to reps. of both my speaker manufacturer (Revel) and my cable mfgr. (Sonoran) who both believed there was a benefit to biwiring. The cost of biwiring my cable, which was custom made, was not significant greater. I listened to the speakers in both modes and felt biwiring was helpful. I put a lot of stock in the advice of the mfgr. Their not selling me cable and they make a great speaker. Same is true of my cable mfgr.

Some good responses here...and Stehno nailed it...it really is system dependent vs speaker dependent...that being said...I tend to side with Dynaudio...one of the few companies that doesnt believe in the so called "benefits" of bi-wiring...they dont include biwiring terminals on their speakers...and I dont own Dynaudio products...but find that biwiring does help sell more pricey cables...and to a small degree inflates the cost of most speakers...unless you have a very revealing hi end system...in which case you would probably b-amp anyways...

Some to many will testifiy that bi-wiring typically improves soundstaging and imaging along with providing a more open and airy presentation.

However, at least one white paper actually call this 'improvement' a distortion of sorts and after the initial emotion of experiencing the 'improvement', the paper claims it is unnatural and is more like slimely pollution with every record you play. Or something like that.

Here's the paper: http://www.sonicdesign.se/biwire.html

Whether it truly is a distortion, I do not know.

Nevertheless, popular forklore states that some speakers sound better bi-wired and that some speakers are meant to be bi-wired.

On the contrary, you should never consider just the speaker when contemplating bi-wiring. You should also take into consideration the contribution that other components and the cables themselves make. Not to mention your system's synergy as a whole, and finally your budget.

Even after much research and eventual purchase, you may or may not notice any sonic difference. And if you do, those sonic differences could be good or bad.

In my case, I had internal bi-wired cables that had mono terminations on both ends. Then I converted those terminations to bi-wire and noticed the usual improvements.

I recently purchased new and different sc's and I am back to mono terminations with matching 6-inch jumpers and the original speaker jumper straps back in place.

And I do not feel that I'm missing the bi-wiring affects as I believe the new cables and other subsequent upgrades have more than made up for those affects.

Personally, I'm neither for bi-wiring nor really against it, as every system and taste is different.

But my first suggestion would be to use those monies that you may have earmarked for bi-wired cables toward an upgrade of the weakest link in your system, cables or otherwise.

I guess I don't believe bi-wiring needs to be as important as some believe it is.

-IMO

Try this cheap idea I got from a post on Audio Asylum. Go to Radio Shack and buy enough l8 gauge to 22 gauge solid core (not stranded) wire to make two runs from amp to speakers. Use pieces of the same wire as jumpers when single wiring. Try your setup biwired and singlewired and compare - see which you like best. No, this won't give you the sound you might get from expensive wire, but it will (or should) give you a sense of which (bi or single) sounds best in your system. And it won't sound bad on an absolute basis either.

Yes you can biwire. The only thing you need is the correct speaker cable. Bi-wire speaker cable involves a single set of terminations on the amp end and a dual set on the speaker end. Like two runs of speaker cable combined into one at the amp end.
There are theoretical advantages to biwiring, although like anything audio, this is debated. The bottome line is if your speakers are designed to be biwired, then chances are your speakers will sound better with the right biwire cables. Or by bi-amping.

Amps that have dual outputs, or speakers that are bi-amped (two amps per speaker) can/must use two sets of "single wire" cables.

I think you will really like that Creek amp.

-Karl