Does the"quality" of jumpers affect the sound?

04-26-07: [email protected]
Notwithstanding the statements about jumpers making a difference and connecting at either the high or low side, cross wiring + to hi and - to low, cannot make any difference since the current is AC and effectively the + & - change continuously according to the frequency.

I'm not so sure about the accuracy of this statement. First, with AC power, the + & - do change continuously, but not according to frequency, they change continuously according to time. The North American AC standard is 60 cycles per second.

Secondly, I was always under the impression that an amplifiers audio output was DC, not AC, is this not correct? If the amp does output DC then absolute phase polarity is an issue. Please let me know if I am incorrect, and amplifiers audio output is AC.

Cheers,
John

Well I have tried wiring the positive lead to the top binding post and the negative lead to the lower binding post and was pleased with the results. I had been doing this for about 2 weeks and decided to see if anyone else had the same experience.

As of today I'm going to try bi-wiring. I am using a pair of Virtual Dynamics Master cables for the top end and a pair of FIM/CRL Silver cables for the bottom end. Unfortunately, my amp has one set or binding posts per channel so I have to use banana adapters on the VD cables for the connection to the amp end while the FIM/CRL cables will be connetcd via their Bocchino spades at both ends. The banana adapters I am using are from Bocchino and are recommended by VD. They are certainly well built and solid.

Does anyone have an opinion as to whether it is best to stick with one brand of cable for bi-wiring?

John,
Since a speaker is essentially a linear electric motor it works only if the voltage and current vary creating a magnetic field analogue to the waveform - hence the current is alternating according to frequency of the signal.

The voltage at the amp output varies from + to - and as such is AC.

AC doesn,t just apply to power cords, but also to the input of speakers. Ever do the poraity check on speakers? One applies a 9 volt cell (DC) to the terminals and watches in which direction the cone moves and stops. The cone moves back and forth in sympathy with the varying voltage and therefore the voltage must alternate between + and - for the cone to respond to the frequency changes.
That is why direction on AC current carrying lines makes no difference, since the current is always reversing itself with the frequency.
Salut, Bob P.

Jmcgrogan2
All analog audio signals, regardless of their magnitude, are AC in nature. All Audio amplifiers or integrated amps connected to typical loudspeakers are designed to generate amplified versions of the incoming AC (musical) signal. Any DC should be very very low, as this will bias the woofers one way or the other.

in very bad situations, such as blown output devices in the amp, will there be massive DC on the output.

All musical instruments, in their natural state generate periodic (hence AC) waveforms. Drums generate impulses with ringing, but its still periodic.

The speakers require an AC signal or we would not hear much of anything. The transducers vibrate proportional to the AC signal, compressing and expanding the air, which in turn does the same thing to our ear drum.

Does anyone have an opinion as to whether it is best to stick with one brand of cable for bi-wiring?

If your goal is making your speaker sound more coherent, then sticking to one brand of wire is a good idea. I would even recommend making sure that the two cables of a biwire set are very close in design or identical if possible. The importance of this will have a lot to do with the speaker you have.

If the speaker is a two-way design, where the crossover point occurs in the critical midrange, it becomes more important that the two cables are identical or very nearly the same. In a three-way, where the crossover point occurs at a much lower frequency, you can often get away with a less expensive cable for the bass. Be aware that three-way speakers with more gradual crossover slopes (1st order) or a somewhat higher crossover point between the midrange and woofer, will benefit more from a nearly identical or better quality cable to the bass. Or to put it another way, they will show the limitations of an inferior or vastly different cable design used in the bottom half of the biwire.