Using bi-wire cables on non-biwirable speakers

Put them both on the binding posts. This will do no harm. Don't dangle unused cables...an amp disaster waiting to happen. Jallen

Thanks Jallen. Just to clarify - both banana's in the binding post? Is this possible?

Puting both on the binding posts works, but seems to mess up the imaging.

It seems as though I really should just purchase an inexpensive pair of speaker cables to hold me over until a proper replacement becomes available.

There is scant (but not quite zero) scientific reason for biwire connection to speakers that have separate connections for the woofer and tweeter crossover sections. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by running separate wires to a common woofer/tweeter connection.

I've heard some say running multiple similar cables between a single amp and speaker connection can make a big difference in sound (for the better). Don't some cable manufacturers like Nordost use a parallel multipath conductor design in their high end cables?

I don't think it can hurt to try. Try it both ways and see if there is a difference I'd be interested to know.

Having bananas at the speaker ends makes it difficult.

If you want to keep the biwire capability of the wires for later, I suggest swapping one of the speaker-end pairs (either one) of banana plugs with spades. Most binding posts will accept a spade and a banana plug with no problem.

Otherwise, if you're not planning to sell them and don't mind a little butchery, you can just clip the bananas, twist all the proper ends together and have a single "bare wire" connection.

You might even notice an improvement in sound when you get the connectors out of there. :)

I agree with Eldartford with the caveat that if you run both conductors from the amp to the given speaker you will be doubling the cross section of the , thus providing a slightly lower resistance and reducing I^2R losses. This will likely not have a noticeable effect as your speaker wire is probably no smaller than 16 guage and you likely are not passing enough current through the conductors to make a difference.

As to why some companies use multiple conductors in a cable that is meant to be connected at only one point on each end- the proffered theory is to reduce the impact of skin effect - which is the tendency for current density to be greater away from the center of a conductor. Technically true - but skin effect is frequency dependent and the flaw in the proffered theory is that at audio frequencies the impact of skin effect is negligible.

You can plug bannas from the highs and Spades from the lows onto the same speaker post.