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Transparent Cables and Bi-wiring to Vandersteens

I have Vandersteen 2Ce Signatures--capable of delivering a lot of information about what is being fed to them. I have immense respect for Richard and his products, thus I want to believe him when he dictates that his speakers must be bi-wired and that two less expensive runs of cable to each speaker sounds better than one for the same price.

Alternatively, I worked at a Transparent dealer out of college many years ago and became loyal to their brand. I have spoken with Transparent about the whole bi-wiring thing, and their official stance is that for what it costs to do a true bi-wire (that is, their Bi-"CABLES", now discontinued), one can simply move up a level in their lineup and attain equal, if not better, results.

So who do I believe? I have never had access to someone with a lot of Audioquest stock to try their bi-wire speaker cables or other brands. Transparent's current "Bi-wire" cables are the same as using jumpers. They just build the jumpers into the end of the cables for you (taken straight from them), so they are not true bi-wire cables.

I recently moved from Music Wave Ultra MM to Reference MM2 and decided to go through the re-connections of doing a little test that dawned on me while I had both in my possession--do a true bi-wire with both sets of cables. Reference MM2 for mids/lows and the Ultra MM for the highs (I know, right?! Keep both--ha). I keep seeking more depth and did not get that or what I would say was better imaging, but what I did get was a little bit more organic sound in the upper frequencies, which means a lot to me. I want it to sound real. Switching back to just the Reference and jumpers, I guess I would say that I hear more distortion in the upper frequencies. I couldn't quite place it, but some other things sounded a little better, though. Imaging and air maybe. Perhaps better attacks. It also occurred to me that the Reference are calibrated to a High-Z value and that the parallel speaker cable runs would have cut that in half and possibly put it out of range.

So what do I do? I think I have the most basic Transparent jumpers, so I could upgrade those (they recommended this). Maybe the upper frequencies would get better then. I could sell both of what I have and search for an older bi-cable in Ultra or Reference, both of which are very hard to find. Or I could abandon Transparent for speaker cables and go with someone else entirely.

I appreciate others' testing and experiences more than opinions. Who has compared Transparent speaker wire to other brands? Who has experimented with their bi-cables and bi-wiring? What other brands would be on the same level as Reference MM2 and for roughly the same cost or cheaper? I am trying to put all Reference MM2 in my system now (interconnects, speaker wire...).

Thanks a lot!
jwseitz
stereo5's avatar
stereo5
6,248 posts
 
I had Vandersteen 2ci and 2ce speakers for many years. I used them with double runs of Audioquest Indigo Blue speaker cables (long discontinued) and later on I tried a single run of MIT Terminator 2 speaker cables. Believe me, Richard Vandersteen knows what he is talking about. He designed the crossover to be bi-wired. A single run of the MIT cables and a jumper was no match for double runs of much cheaper Audioquest cables.

I ended up buying another pair of the MIT cables to truly bi-wire them. Later on, I tried an internal bi-wired pair of the newer MIT AVT1 speaker cable, but the double runs of wire were clearly superior.
jfrech's avatar
jfrech
1,816 posts
 
What Stereo5 says doesn't surprise me. I will say a higher level of Transparent wire will be clearly superior to...
zd542
5,339 posts
 
"I appreciate others' testing and experiences more than opinions. Who has compared Transparent speaker wire to other brands? Who has experimented with their bi-cables and bi-wiring? What other brands would be on the same level as Reference MM2 and for roughly the same cost or cheaper? I am trying to put all Reference MM2 in my system now (interconnects, speaker wire...)."

I have some experience with this using your speakers. All of my comments on biwiring are about Vandersteen Model 2 and 3's. I find that Vandersteen is very different than other brands when it comes to biwiring. After reading your post, I would recommend you try 2 things. First, is you need to use the same exact cable for the highs and lows. Every time I tried different cables, it always sounds messed up. Second, is to try something other than Transparent. I've used both MIT and Transparent and while I got good results with other brands of speakers, I didn't care for them on the Vandersteen's. I suspect that it has something to do with the network box. The best results I could get were with a network box cable was an internal biwire pair of MIT's. I still preferred regular cables.

You ask if its better to use 2 less expensive runs of cable, as opposed to 1 better quality run with a jumper. Here's the results I got (please keep in mind this is my subjective opinion - i can't gaurantee that everyone would come to the same conclusion i did). I first took a pair of single run Tara The 2's (about $3500 if I remember correctly) and hooked it up to my Model 2's with a jumper to break them in and get to know the speaker. Everything sounded fine with the Tara's. Cable Co. sent me a box of speaker cables and I ended up picking a internal biwire pair of AQ that went for about $2000. I thought they were a little better than the Tara. I figured it was the biwiring. Before I placed my order for the AQ's I tried, I called AQ and confirmed with them I should get the cables with 1/4in spade's. When I told the guy from AQ what speakers I had, he insisted I get 2 separate pairs of CV-6 ($1200) instead. He said it would definitely sound better. So I ordered 2 pairs of CV-6. Someone messed up and sent me 2 pairs of Type 6 instead ($400 for both runs, and only because of the factory terminations. Type 6 was AQ's best bulk cable). I told Cable Co. about the mistake and they said it was no problem if I use the Type 6 they sent me until I got my CV-6. The sound I got from the 2, brand new and unbroken in pairs of Type 6, was much better than any cable I tried up to that point. Wasn't even close. Had I not heard the difference myself, I would never have believed it. Eventually, I got my 2 runs if CV-8 (during the wait, CV-6 was replaced by CV-8, so that's what AQ gave me). They were better, but nothing like the difference of using 2 separate runs of cable.

So that's my take on it, anyway. I typed all this out really fast, so if I messed something up, just let me know and I'll clarify it. Hope this info helps.
jl35
3,913 posts
 
I agree on using two separate runs, and would add it works best to keep them six inches apart if possible.
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