There are a few about..... Mainly though because hi fi tends to run on what's trendy or "in" at the moment and not on what's the best engineering solution to problems.
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There have been a couple of (proper) active systems at the NEBO meets. They were very good.
Hi Paul,
The fact remains that my speakers (WD25TEx) and one other pair (WD20T) we tried (funnily enough, both are Peter Comeau aperiodic designs) go lower, higher and give better piano tone etc. with the crossovers close to the amp. I take it this would mean that the crossovers could have been better designed or implemented (more likely) in the first place and the changes are just that - changes and as you say, each to his own.
Thought about it but nope I don't understand your question
The cable I had was the one sold by World Audio as simple OFC cable. I hardly think it´s the worst cable in the world but certainly not the best, I assume.
Do you have a equaliser set up in your system too?
Just a thought but could the length of cable or position of the crossover affect the frequencies to and from the eq causing your speakers to sound different and could the same sound difference be achieved if you tweaked your eq?
Taz
Errr....
what the OP describes is not biwiring. You HAVE to split the signal after the crossover, otherwise you are mingling the frequency divided signal back into one with no crossover! All external crossovers work the same, they take the signal from the amp (single wired usually) and pass it through a crossover which splits the signal to each drive unit. Hence there is no birwiring involved. It happens on internal crossovers where the signal gets split to each driver. Some confusion here methinks.
As for claims of signals from amps to crossovers (nternal or external) being clearer if biwired, well the signal doesn't know it's been bi-wired so each run contains the full frequency signal anyway, therefore the only beneficiaries are cable salesmen. If it does sound better, chances are going up in thickness from your standard cable will have the same effect.
Then there's bi-amping, where the signal from the preamp is split and one or two (stereo or mono) power amp handles the bass (usually one with high damping factor and adequate power) and the other(s) handle the higher frequencies so each power amp has a set of output cables feeding a seperate crossover board for each drive unit (crossever needs to be split for each drive unit usually).
Then there's active, where prior to the power amp (before or with the preamp), the signal is split so that the preamp has outputs for the various frequencies (ie a pre with several outputs linked to internal active crossover boards or in some cases, external to the pre, crossover boards) or multiple pres are used with active boards for each driver.
Confused?..you will be.
Bi-wiring works on more or less the same principle as star grounding, and few would argue against the technical benefits of star grounding. It's funny for me to read some of the comments in this thread. As the designer of possibly the world's only bi-wiring capable speaker selector I have had literally hundreds of customers feedback on the differences that users noticed before and after they tried bi-wiring in their system. I am not claiming that it is the best thing since sliced bread. But all little bit helps when it makes an improvement to our system's performance.