Help with bi-wiring

Greyhound, to begin with I believe the OP is using a basic stereo preamp with no Audyssey, nevertheless let’s look at a few facts, and some more articles for reading, if you care to do so.

As noted in the article I provided in my first post, the manufacturer of his speakers states to use identical cables, as different ones will “interfere with the proper blending of the woofer and midrange driver through the crossover point.” Further explanation of this can be found in this article from Audioquest,

http://www2.audioquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/UndrstndgBiWr.pdf

The paragraph at “Biwiring and Cable Geometry” explains how the different electrical characteristics of different cables affect the crossover to compromise coherency.

And finally, this post by a well respected amplifier designer states that using different cables “just messes-up the system coherence.” This is also a good read about bi-amping.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1234896660&openfrom&6&4#6

So, my question is, does it make good sense to purposely do things that really screw up the sound, in hopes that Audyssey can completely correct them. Seems to me it would be best to follow proper basic guidelines in setting up a system.

I have a lot of experience biwiring Vandersteens. Use 2 completely separate runs of the same exact cable. If you use 2 different cables, you will hear the difference. One option you may want to consider is having the 2 runs of cable terminated together at the amp end. AQ does it for me, I'm pretty sure kimber will do it as well.

Tls49,

No offense intended. My comment about "not rocket science" was specific to Kimber Kable. Lots of other brands are far more difficult to cut and terminate for various reasons and should only be done by the cable maker or someone who is fully competent to do so.

Well, I have used different cables from top vs bottom and to my ears ,I have not screwed up the sound. I suppose the possibility is there to do so and you can't go wrong by using the same . I just do not agree that if you use different cables , it WILL screw up the sound.
So i will concur that using the same cables top to bottom is a safe bet. No argument on that

Well, I suppose there is no real need to use different cables even if it doesn't screw up the sound. People generally recommend the shortest runs possible, especially with speaker cables and since I have 2 mono amps, I would be able to position the amps fairly close to the speaker terminals.

As far as attempting the splice myself, I have an image of completely destroying the cables the first time I try it... but of course the next 499 pairs I did would be perfect (lol)

Thanks for all your feedback... more ideas than I expected. I really like the idea of contacting Kimber. I didn't know they did that kind of work. I imagine if they can't help, they would be in a position to recommend someone good to work on their own cables....

The suggestion by Zd542 of combining the amp ends sounds like a great idea. The terminal strip on my amp doesn't seem beefy enough to accomodate all those piggybacked spade lugs on the 8 ohm tap.

Meanwhile, I'll read that article by Vandersteen, and then contact Kimble Kable about sending them out. I'll post the outcome...