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Why bi-wiring is bad

From a link at the Chris Van-Haus website:
THE DISADVANTAGE WITH BI-WIRE

One thing that happens when you biwire your loudspeakers is that the input of the high- and the low-pass filters are fed with different input signals. The difference is a result of the high frequencies and the low frequencies being forced to travel different paths, perhaps through different types of cables, but under all circumstances through cables who have seen different loads (a tweeter with a high pass filter has a completely different impedance response compared to a woofer with a low pass filter!).

What happens is that the drivers will work less good together than when their filter halves were fed with equal signals. The result is a generation of more static and stochastic phase error sounds at different directions from the loudspeaker. The stochastic phase error sounds appear because there may be different types of unlinearities in the low- and high-frequency paths.

What does this sound like? Well, usually, just as you may expect from physics, it appears as a change in the reproduction of space and sound stage. Often, the first impression is that the "biwired" sound presents extended "dimensions", more "air", and is more "living". The impression after a week or month, however, is that all recordings sound very much alike, and the "airiness" appears on all records. It does not even sound like air anymore, instead more like a slime that pollutes every record you play. No wonder, since it is not a real, recorded quality but a "speaker characteristic" added to all reproduced material. "Sameness" is another word for it.

I just went back to bi-wiring over the weekend. The first thing I noticed was cymbal-like instruments shimmer much more. Secondly the bass now seemed to be less perhaps due to the greater high frequency information.
On orchestra music the orchestra is now well behind the speakers instead of right at the speaker. Like the article said, this may be a phase or time shift error and the depth may become wearing over time.
Finally there is slighlty better separation between instruments. It's easier to pick out each instrument.
cdc

Showing 1 response by sean

sean
6,231 posts
 
I think that bi-wiring can allow one to tailor the sound to their liking via selecting different cables for top and bottom. It may also reduce series resistance, which is never a bad thing.

I also think that using different cables can introduce time delay distortions between the top and bottom end. This has to do with dielectric absorption, geometries, etc... Not all cables pass the signal at the same rate or "speed". This is called "velocity factor" and some are much "faster" than others.

I do believe that one can hear and measure the differences in response when doing TRUE bi-wiring ( two completely separate and isolated runs of cable per speaker ). These differences becomes more apparent as the cable designs become more divergent from one another and lengths of the cables increase.

I also believe that one can hear and measure differences between various single speaker cables within a system. I also believe these differences can be of quite a great magnitude under specific conditions. Some of these variances might be large enough that they may almost equal the sonic differences that occur when one tries different speaker placement.

The bottom line is that one makes their decision, likes the end result, hates the end result, can't tell a difference either way, etc.... Do what you want to do and enjoy your music and system. Who cares what anybody else thinks. It should all be done for fun, education and entertainment. If we can do this and share our results, we multiply the fun, education and entertainment factor. Sean
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