Bi-wiring DOES work if you have external crossovers.

[Arkless Electronics]

Why don't people build proper active systems any more? [I don't mean speakers with built in class D power amps]

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.

[Macca]

There have been a couple of (proper) active systems at the NEBO meets. They were very good.

[Chris]

Just to enter the fray, it is NOT a great idea to move external passive crossovers as far from the speakers as possible (ie back to the amp) and there is no "wide band" coupling from speaker "cones" to passive crossovers placed close to speaker enclosures. Too many assumptions being chucked about folks.

The reason you ought to keep external crossovers close (ish) to the enclosures is that the further away you move them, the more chance of altering the voicing because you are unnecessarily introducing a greater length of reactive capacitance and inductance from a filter which should, as far as is practicable, be placed as close to the driver as possible because the whole point of a passive crossover is to act as part of the electrical load on the drive unit to accurately shape the acoustic response to the desired shape and phase alignment. For all practical purposes, just outside the enclosure is usually the best place.

Bi-amping does nothing magic to a speaker's response and the only obvious benefit is that bass damping factor can be improved where you have longer cable runs, but equally, just stepping up to the next cable gauge size does the same thing. In theory, single wiring also offers less crossover distortion by introducing some electrical damping between cone and woofer, depending on the design.

That all said, run with whatever you prefer the sound of as there's no right or wrong, but it is not correct to make assumptions based on assumption or what others have written on t'ut interweb!

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.

[Virtual-Symmetry]

There have been a couple of (proper) active systems at the NEBO meets. They were very good.

What of the Stonehenge variety?

[Macca]

Thought about it but nope I don't understand your question

[unfairlane]

Isn't the Only relevant factor of a Speaker wire it's Resistance ? Remembering that it's a Power feed.
Presumably the OP had the worst/most resistive wire on the Planet pressed into use as Speaker wires.
Not many other possible explanations that are not into 'betwixt the ears' subjects.

Yup, you are right danilo. Most audiophiles have no idea how important this is to a systems performance. Btw;`my speakers are tri-wired and I know why.

[Chris]

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.

[TazSob]

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

[Reffc]

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.

[StanleyB]

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.