Tom Littlefield , Aug 30, Location: Boston MA. Thanks for the post. You made many good points. I have some speakers that I bi-wire. I use Blue Jeans Cable speaker wire for those with good results. That being said, I am so glad my Wilson Yvette speakers don't use a bi-wire configuration.
Tullman , Aug 30, Location: Norway. Uhm, this doesn't make any sense, does it? The amplifier will be delivering a full frequency signal through the speaker cable regardless of wether there's a low-pass or high-pass filter at the other end. There's no "removing detrimental frequencies" going on before the actual filter.
And where is the text from anyway? Got a link to the original piece? Ninja Bomber , Aug 30, Location: PA. True bi- amplification requires an external crossover to be used instead of the speaker's own internal crossover. Bi- wiring is simply means running two sets of wires - each carrying the full frequency range of the original signal to each section of the crossover.
Bi wiring alone does not eliminate any portion of the frequency range from arriving at the speaker inputs from the amplifier. Last edited: Aug 30, TheVU , BillWojo , timind and 21 others like this. It's silly. Doug G. RhodesSupremacy , Frost , JackG and 4 others like this. It's not silly. Steve Hoffman , Aug 30, Funky54 , rem , TarnishedEars and 10 others like this. RhodesSupremacy , acdc , missan and 1 other person like this. Location: The Mars Hotel. F1nut , Aug 30, SteveKr , lance b , floweringtoilet and 8 others like this.
Over the years people have found creative ways for enhancing sound quality beyond just buying more expensive speakers. There are two techniques in particular that we will talk about here: Bi-Wiring and Bi-Amping. While neither of these techniques are strictly necessary, they can potentially give you better sound. Speakers are usually a combination of two specific speakers: high frequency speakers or tweeters and low frequency or bass speakers.
Both Bi-Wiring and Bi-Amping try to improve sound quality by isolating these components from one another. Bi-wiring is a way of connecting a speaker to an audio amplifier.
Normally only one cable connects the speaker to the amplifier. In bi-wiring, each loudspeaker uses two cables one for the tweeter and one for the bass in the speaker which are then connected to the same amplifier. Since both sets of cables connect to the same ports on the amplifier, many people argue that there is no benefit to this kind of setup and that it is a waste of money.
However, many audio enthusiasts feel that bi-wiring good speakers can make a subtle improvement to middle range sound. Mid-range is arguably the most important part of the music; for one thing, the human voice falls into this range. According to these audio enthusiasts, voices are clearer and less muffled by using bi-wiring.
Most modern speakers come with two pairs of binding posts: one pair for the high frequency and one for the low frequency. These speakers come with a conductive bar that links the two posts together so you only need one cable to connect the speakers to your amplifier.
To bi-wire your speakers, you first need to remove these linking bars. Have I ever used them during the design of the speaker? When we were offering the biwire terminals, right at the end of the design process which has all been with single wire I took a saw to the prototype PCB, cut in in half to isolate the bass and tweeter sections and then made a pretty PCB layout based on that. Did I listen to the biwired crossover before authorising production?
Do I believe that even 0. But what do I know about it? I only design the speakers What else can you do to them other than dust and polish them? The claim is that this particular 30mm long piece of highly conductive metal is somehow, magically, more important than any other 30mm piece of perhaps less highly conductive metal anywhere else in the chain between the loudspeaker drive units and the power station a hundred miles away which is supplying the current that causes the cone to move and a sound to be generated.
Does that sound logical? Does that sound an intellectual argument that a professor of engineering at a university could or should set his students studying?
Of course not. It's a daft fixation on what is, from a point of electrical conduction, probably the best "link" in the chain from the point that the mains supply enters the house. So it lends itself to being fiddled with and to all the associated gratification of adjusting ones hifi.
Pick a genuinely 'weak' part of the signal chain and experiment, but this big, fat brass part with countless billions of surplus electrons isn't the hold grail.
Of that I am totally and absolutely certain as I've stated. You'd be better off paying attention to, let's say, 30mm of copper track on the printed circuit board that the binding posts are pressing onto which is vastly less conductive because it is thousands or millions of times thinner than the biwire link.
But of course, that would involve opening the speaker and voiding the warranty. Circulating from the power station, through your amp, cables, crossover, voice coil and back again to the power station?
Anyone into biwire connectors grasping that concept please? That concept of how electricity actually works is why there is a live and neutral pin on your wall socket. There has to be a flow. And what impedes the flow is resistance. And resistance is associated with thin parts, like the voice coil about 6 ohms. So the fact that the biwire link has a resistance of perhaps 0. Yes, you'd like to think those unambiguously clear words of such a highly respected designer such as Alan would carry some weight with audiophiles.
Alas, not all of us can be so readily persuaded - amazingly enough not even all Harbeth customers! Hence the tone of almost exasperation in Alan's voice. We audiophiles do seem to be a suspicious, superstitious lot. Almost anything said by anyone regardless of their authority or experience, is regularly challenged and attacked by us.
I should know, before I escaped this compulsion, I used to spend more time with tweaking than listening for many a year. Oh, how my fingers used to ache from the endless weekly routine of cleaning all the possible signal and electrical contacts me and my pipe cleaners could reach! Nowadays I hardly bother at all, and guess what happended to the sound? Nothing, nothing at all. Market forces and vested financial interests do also have a lot to answer for this confused state of affairs, but there's no denying the sheer persistent hardheaded arrogance of certain of us audiophiles.
As Alan says with a hint of sarcasm, "But what do I know about it? Maybe biwiring is akin to the color of your favorite car? I have my tried bi-wiring with my Sonus Faber Venere 3. I thought the sound from the biwiring was fuller - akin to the old days of turning on the loudness button. My next test was to biwire from the Speaker A terminal and the sound was identical. I moved and decided to try Blue Jean Cables and purchased the internal bi-wire configuration and have been happy with the my sound even as I upgraded my equipment to a McIntosh preamp and amp set-up.
In the end I have a choice - to enjoy listening to music or aspire for 11 to magically appear on the volume knob. While I'm open to magic, I'm enjoying the music. So Alan Shaw says it doesn't matter and Richard Vandersteen says it absolutely matters. Two very respected speaker designers with completely different views of the same subject. Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience? What a logical fallacy. I would not add a set of binding posts to a set of speakers just to try it out.
If there are already two sets of binding posts, give it a try for yourself and make your own decision. The crossovers in your speaker virtually split your cable into multiple cable of different frequency bands.
Resistance is not a non linearity so it does not contribute to IM distortion. As mentioned previously other than increasing gauge, makes no difference. Bi amping can reduce IM distortion which can justify multiple terminals. If you are purposely trying to change the frequency response with cables then it would be easier with a biwiring setup, but cables make poor tone controls. I only bi-wire when I'm using speakers that have that capability. I will say that if the straps are gold plated brass, you should replace them with some good wire or the Cardas copper straps.
Secondly, can Vandersteen actually demonstrate HOW it matters? With a quick search, I found anecdotal claims by Vandersteen that bi-wiring sounds better on his speakers, and this: Additional experiments with a Hall Effect probe revealed that high-current bass frequencies created a measurable field around the wires that expanded and collapsed with the signal. We believe that this dynamic field modulates the smaller signals, especially the very low level treble frequencies.
With the high-current signal Bass separated from the low-current signal Treble this small signal modulation was eliminated as long as the cables were separated by at least an inch or two.
To keep the treble cable out of the field surrounding the bass cable. Note that he says "We believe Not exactly hard science, though perhaps he is on to something. I found a related article on "qacoustics" UK with some experiments appearing to support the ides that bi-wiring confers benefits. Don, a regular and knowledgable contributor to the audiosciencereview. A plot of voltage would show the same voltage applied to woofer and tweeter less changes due to wire loss, insignificant in practice.
The net energy the amp delivers, and that the woofer and tweeter each receive, is the same whether you use a single wire or bi-wire. The wire itself contributes negligibly to distortion and so the bi-wire argument is a red herring is a false argument. The amplifier and speakers dominate by orders of magnitude the distortion.
If someone has a scientific explanation for why bi-wiring may be superior in practice, please do provide it. I agree withe writer who said Scotch can affect the sound. I havr found Glennlivet works best. Your mileage may differ depending on how twisted your dna strands are. We at noseyparkerkiller are studying the millions of dna possibilities in your genetic information and will soon be able to send you a list, based on our proprietary scientific studies, which will advise you which of our proprietary tweaks worst best.
In the meantime we have found that thunderbird wine works almost as well as the Glenlivet and leaves you with more cash to spend on our dna advice and tweaks. Wrt Vandersteen, anyone who thinks it is a breakthrough that a magnetic field exists around current carrying wires and that they collapse and expand with the signal Hasn't taken a high school physics course.
It is laughable someone would put that in writing. Absent magnetic materials surrounding the cable don't use that cable collar :- that field is going to be quite linear hence no distortion products AND as the two wires run parallel and opposite direction the field strength is very small wrt the signal size. Two strikes, Vandersteen is out. The terminals were fitted for one reason and one reason only: to give the user choice. This sure sounds like hard science.
Lots and lots of "I believe" in there. He couldn't even be bothered to listen to it. It is no more authoritative than Vandersteen's anecdotal evidence. Is there any evidence that Richard Vandersteen does not use science in his designs? I would say that quite the opposite is true. In fact, he would say that designers that choose to not pay attention to phase in their speakers are absolutely wrong. He does back that with measurements. I am not saying either is right or wrong. I am just pointing out that many people here love to pick out the expert that they want to believe.
You know, appeal to authority. Bi-Wiring is provable and measurable. Audible depends on myriad factors. Too many with zero technical skill or training hear phantasms, some chemically induced. Their posts are not worth the bits to transmit. Worth every penny.
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