Advantages of bi-wire?

Bi-wiring is for the politically correct audiophile.

Don't hear, don't tell.

I biwire because I had the extra cable available to do so, but I can't honestly say I heard that much of a difference. One thing to try before you spring for the extra cable ...

Try hooking up your single wire cable as follows and see if you hear a difference. + to the treeter + and - to the woofer -. Then use jumpers to the other connectore. Or try reversing it, + to the woofer + and - to the tweeter -.

I've heard good reports that this "cross wiring" will improve on just hooking the cable to the tweeter (or woofer) + and - and jumping from there.

Enjoy,
Bob

completely agree with tvad--having experimented with biwiring with alot of different speakers, i've heard great improvement in some cases and no improvement or no discernible difference in others. i do suspect, however unscientifically, that manufacturers push biwiring because audiophiles generally believe the more wires the better, not necessarily because there's a sonic advantage. note that some very well-regarded manufacturers like thiel that don't offer biwiring and opine that single wiring/amping is superior; i guess like most things audio there are no absolutes.

A very simple, free test to determine if you would be likely to hear the difference bi-wiring makes.

If your speaker is bi-wire capable, simply switch the posts used to feed the speaker. i.e. If you use the bass posts and a jumper to the Mid/Tweeter, switch it around and feed the Mid/tweeter and jump to the bass. I'll bet there are some audiophiles who have never tried that.

What you're doing is testing the difference the jumper in the signal path makes, and in my experience almost universally, if the jumper is not a high end cable, the results are uglier for the "non-wired" driver(s).

If you cannot hear the difference, then you won't likely hear the difference in bi-wiring. If you can tell a distinct difference/improvement on the drivers fed the cable directly, then you likely will likely hear a difference bi-wiring. Then you have to determine if it's worth the cost of the extra cable. With cables running the gammut from affordable to obnoxious, you likely could find something appropriate.

Hi Lynne,

Besides the possibility that biwiring will not be helpful in many cases, some prior threads make clear that it can sometimes result in significant degradation of the sound.

If your search of the archives did not turn up the following threads, I think you'll find them to be of interest. Three different people reported that in their systems biwiring resulted in significant bass loss, which was even measurable in one case. Near the end of the threads, I offered a possible explanation:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1247245568

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1247016622

Also, the following papers by Steve Nugent of Empirical Audio, who participates here as Audioengr, explain some speaker cable effects that might occur at ultrasonic and rf frequencies, that would be affected by biwiring. Which in some cases could conceivably have audible consequences via their effects on the amplifier.

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/audio-faqs/bi-wiring-speaker-cables

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/audio-faqs/are-cable-resonances-real

Although one could debate the likelihood that a lot of what Steve describes would be audibly significant, I think his papers get across the idea that biwiring can call into play some subtle technical effects that are essentially unpredictable.

Best regards,
-- Al