Monitor Audio GR-60: biwire cable ok?


Good Day,

I am very interested in purchasing a set of Monitor Audio speakers. My two current choices are the GR-60's and the GR-20's. I would of course prefer the GR-60's due to their bass extension, however I am a bit confused/concerned about the speaker terminals. I have a set of bi-wire speaker cables. Does this pose a problem at all to running the GR-60's? Will there be any imbalance if I run it with these cables with biwire cable? How would I actually connect them: by running the speaker cables to the bass and tweeter terminals and bridging the mids and highs?

Thanks and Regards,
C. Lerner,
South Africa
xenithon

Showing 3 responses by rsbeck

Since it is a tri-wirable speaker and you have bi-wire cables, you can connect
your cables to two sets of speaker terminals and then you have to bridge -- or run jumpers from -- one pair to another. I would definitely dedicate one pair of leads to the bass and then bridge the other two -- as you suggest. Try switching the other two and see if it works better connected to the tweeters and bridged to the mids or the other way around. Also, the speakers will probably come with bridges. You can use those or you might get slightly better sound by making "jumpers" instead.
If size is an issue, then this is an easy one -- the F-30's are quite large, so those are probably out. If you have the budget for the GR-60's, those are the ones to get. They're in a different league than the GR 20's. I've heard both the F30's and the GR-60's -- they are both great speakers, both compete very well with speakers costing quite a bit more -- the GR-60's have slightly better bass extension. The GR-60's are fairly good sized speakers, but they are not nearly as large as the F-30's. I think you'd be happy with the GR-60's -- they're dynamic, coherent, accurate and musical -- and -- they sound great in a lot of different kinds of systems -- try to audition them if you can.
To my ear, the added bass driver gives the music more weight and dimension, but if size is a factor, the 20's will take up less space than the 60's. When you audition the 60's, audition the 20's, too and see if you agree with me. You might be able to live with the 20's, they are also a great bang for the buck speaker. Your call.