Why bi-wiring is bad

I'll just chime in off-hand, and not too technical (cause I don't know'em all and I'm tired). But alot of the biwiring hype is crap, I think. Alot of speakers feature dual binding posts simply as a selling point (fact) and most systems really don't stand to benefit from it. Personnally, Chris VanHaus nor Jon Risch are two not to get knowledge from (at least not without some many grains of salt). There are electrical changes that occur when biwiring (the stuff Risch babbles of), but in most systems when you run the calculations, the numbers are completely insignificant (just like the whole "high performance" cable issue itself in many ways). The cited intermodulation distortion in cables, I believe this is bending truth almost into a lie (it just doesn't happen), and LCR values rarely cause shifts of 1/20db, 1/10db is generous. And as others pointed out, biwiring isn't even an option if the system has a series xover (however, parallel xovers are by far the most popular).

That said, there are a few select circumstances where there is, may very well be some truth/benefit to biwiring--aka measurable and significant psychoacoustically. (I'm open to both sides) Half this comes from other sources a little more reputable giving somewhat scant mention in passing that the whole thing (biwiring) isn't ludicrous, the exact specifics I'm not completely sure of. The other half, I know, is with ESL's (not all though) and other speakers with demanding impedences curves in the high-freq., certain low impedence cables can correct deviations that may be in the neighborhood 3db with "standard" cable (so the high performance cables are a reality here, just with a single run). And extending that, if this was a two-way or more system composed of at least one transducer being ESL (although not necessarily) using a seperate run for the highs, esl, and lows, cone, it might stand to clean things up bwiring with "optimized cable". Its certainly one instance where I can actually see talk of optimizing a cable for a specific driver and being signficant in curing some distortions. ESL's have a little different electrical characteristics than "typical" cones in certain regards. But when Rish talks of it in a general hodgepodge way, I tune out--optimizing a cable to a 'normal' tweeter and 'normal' midwoof is an inaudible event. Even then the truth of the issue is I'm sure more obscure than that. I'm not even saying everyone with Martin-Logans are the few who stand to benefit from this (there's exceptions to the rules).

I guess my bottom line is, biwiring can benefit, but I don't know the specifics well enough--with most systems its not an issue (like 99% of'em). And this is all assuming your driving your system with a capable/well engineered amp. If you've got some of these tube amps, like the SET thing going with a damping factor of 1, or less, you'll run into serious problems (colorations) when the output impedence is greater than the speakers resistance I can't see coming to any conclusive improvements in sound with that much distortion. At that point even resistance is a big deal in cable. (Well engineered 'current drive' amps in a multi way (aka biamped, triamped) system is about the only time you want to experiment with output impedences being nearly equal to that of the driver).

To address the thread: I think he's just hypothesising about something he thinks he's hearing. Stochastic=random. I'm not into it. Not to mention, room colorations which can put a nice +/-2db speaker anechoic to real world performance of +/-7db, suddenly the cable is really really insignificant on alot of grounds.

If you ask the wrong question, you are likely to get the right answer to the wrong issue.

This is taken from the Cobalt Cables website:

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BI-wiring is a technique becoming quite popular in speaker applications. However, in our opinion, there are only a few situations where BI-wiring makes sense, and MANY situations where BI-wiring is just hype. Here are a few "qualifiers" to tell if BI-wiring makes sense for you:

• Your amplifier or receiver AND your speakers have two distinct sets of terminals per channel.

• You are running higher than average (200W+) power to each BI-wired channel.

• You are running longer than average (20 ft.+) cable runs to each channel.

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I have orederd a pair of Bi-wireable Wharfedale Diamond Anniversary edition and do want to experiment w/ them, since they were $78 a pair brand new.

I also have a pair of Swans M1 which have separate crossover boards and only one set of binding posts. The manufacturer does not recommend Bi-wiring. They have bi-wireable speakers to satisfy the demand for such.

Time will tell...

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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I have a set of Martin Logan Aerius i's. I have had them for 5 years and have been biwiring them for about two years now. Switching to biwire configuration made an instantly recognizable change to the sound, larger, in my experience, than changing the interconnects or the type of speaker cables used. To me, the sound really opened up and the bass tune and definition really improved. I have no idea what the technical reasons for this are, but the difference is quite large and apparent to anyone who listens. It may be possible that the improvement i am hearing is actually some kind of "static" and "stochiastic" distortion creating a "false sense of air" but every time I try going back to single wire, even using high quality jumpers, I don't like the sound. If it's distortion, so be it.

Bi-wiring is nothing more than a long jumper when you use the same exact cables. I have heard good results using different cables for lows and highs, however.