BiWiring Speakers

A question for all of those electronic gurus.

How come when you have speakers with Bi-Wire connections using Bi-Wire cables makes all of the difference ?

An example:

You have 4 connections on the back of your amp, 2 red, 2 black and on each speaker you have 4 connections, 2 red, 2 black.

If you use 2 sets of cables with 1 black and 1 red on either end and connect both cables at one end together to enable connection to the above amp and then leave the other 2 cables free to connect to the speakers.

A mate of mine and I tried this on his new speakers and it made such a difference over using single wired cables going into the speakers with spliters on speaker.

Difference in the sound:

Large soundstage, sweeter treble, no muffling, tighter bass, cleaner sound.

Any help to understand this one would be appreciated as I am a little lost

Thanks

Paul.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pjdowns

A question for all of those electronic gurus.

How come when you have speakers with Bi-Wire connections using Bi-Wire cables makes all of the difference ?

An example:

You have 4 connections on the back of your amp, 2 red, 2 black and on each speaker you have 4 connections, 2 red, 2 black.

If you use 2 sets of cables with 1 black and 1 red on either end and connect both cables at one end together to enable connection to the above amp and then leave the other 2 cables free to connect to the speakers.

A mate of mine and I tried this on his new speakers and it made such a difference over using single wired cables going into the speakers with spliters on speaker.

Difference in the sound:

Large soundstage, sweeter treble, no muffling, tighter bass, cleaner sound.

Any help to understand this one would be appreciated as I am a little lost

Thanks

Paul.

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Its pretty simple apart from the marketed theory is largely BS and at odds with the reality.

The marketing theory is that the earth junction is taken from the speaker terminals back to the amp terminals so getting nearer to the star earth theory. This doesn't take into account how the crossover is designed and wired, if over complex with earth junctions then that theory is out the window. If very simple with two discreet legs then fine in theory you have an advantage.

In reality the reason it sounds different is that you use two sets of cables and the amplifier "sees" those two sets of LCR (inductance capacitance and resistance) in parallel. This has unpredictable effects depending on the load at either end of the cable and also the inherent LCR of the specific cable. Basically you halve the resistance, double the capacitance and halve the inductance. Lots of variability and problems involved, for example if it is high cap Litz type cable, double that and you can fry some amplifiers that do not have output filtering, Zobel networks or output transformers.

So you have been lucky that is all. The LCR conditions you created made the amplifiers / speaker interface happier :) The only way to bi-wire without these unpredictable consequences of messing with the LCR is by using NVA cable (LS1, LS3 or LS5) or if there are similar designs. Reason - for example LS5 has 28 seperately insulated solid cores, so to bi-wire you don't need to double the cable, you just split off 9 to the treble sockets and 19 to the bass/mid sockets, and of course if the speaker is three way you can tri-wire, say - 5 - 9 - 14. Then what ever residual advantage there is of doing it is yours as a reality instead of just buggering around with the LCR.

I hope that explains it

Thanks for the information Ricard however I am now as confused as ever.

The cables we were using for the test were QED 79 Strand and QED Bronze Anniversary. The 79 strand for the bass and Bronze for the treble.

How was I lucky ? can you really damage amps if you are not lucky ?

Paul.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pjdowns

Thanks for the information Ricard however I am now as confused as ever.

The cables we were using for the test were QED 79 Strand and QED Bronze Anniversary. The 79 strand for the bass and Bronze for the treble.

How was I lucky ? can you really damage amps if you are not lucky ?

Paul.

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You asked for an explanation, well I am afraid it has to be technical in nature. If you cannot understand the technicalities then ask questions about them. For example 79 strands of uninsulted cable behave electrically as one strand as they are in electrical contact (shorting), there are residual skin effects from multistrand, but that will just confuse you and should be left for another question. So in order to bi-wire you need to have electrical insulation between what ever is connected to the HF terminals and that on the LF terminals. If you try to seperate out the wires in the 79 strand you will just have the same as the wiring link, so you have to use two cables. The operative word in my post is 28 *insulated* solid cores, there is no electrical contact between them apart from at the wired ends. So in theory you could use it to wire 28 seperate loudspeaker drive units.

Paul,

Richard has explained it very well. The only thing I would add is that the removal of the brass linking plates on the speaker terminals, when bi-wiring, would also have had an effect. Those things are terrible and always badly degrade the sound.

Marco.

Single wired speakers with ordinary ( QED for instance ) is all you require. My single wired Harbeths, with 79 strand cable, are perfect...

Good Lord! A five year old thread is resurrected!