Bi-wire and Crossover

[Helix]

I've read a few guides on bi-wiring speakers and now I'm a little confused.

Does bi-wiring or bi-amping speakers bypass the crossover inside speakers?

I'd appreciate any help.

 

[Anonymous]

I doubt it would bypass it completely as you wouldn't really want 20Hz signals being sent to the tweeter. At some point the range of frequencies being sent to the speaker would have to be filtered to ensure that the right frequencies where being sent to each driver.

 

[Anonymous]

Cross over still in place which is possibly why it's now generally accepted that bi-wiring has little if any benefit (unless you're a cable manufacturer)

 

[Dan Turner]

In a bi-wire/amp-able speaker the crossover is split into 2 physically separate circuits - one attached between the high frequency binding posts and tweeter which filters out the low frequencies and one between the LF binding posts and the woofer to filter out the high frequencies. The link plates between the binding posts ensure that the signal reaches both from a single set of cables.

In my experience bi-amping is worth it, but where it comes to bi-wiring although you might notice a difference it's just as likely to be worse than better, and even if it is better, you'll get a bigger improvement by spending your whole speaker cable budget on a single run of better cable.

Most speaker manufacturers will readily admit to being sceptical about the benefits of bi-wiring and include the twin sets of binding posts either to facilitate bi-amping, or because of market expectation/demand.

 

[AEJim]

Dan Turner:
In a bi-wire/amp-able speaker the crossover is split into 2 physically separate circuits - one attached between the high frequency binding posts and tweeter which filters out the low frequencies and one between the LF binding posts and the woofer to filter out the high frequencies. The link plates between the binding posts ensure that the signal reaches both from a single set of cables.

In my experience bi-amping is worth it, but where it comes to bi-wiring although you might notice a difference it's just as likely to be worse than better, and even if it is better, you'll get a bigger improvement by spending your whole speaker cable budget on a single run of better cable.

Most speaker manufacturers will readily admit to being sceptical about the benefits of bi-wiring and include the twin sets of binding posts either to facilitate bi-amping, or because of market expectation/demand.

As a speaker manufacturer - I don't like bi-wiring (sorry to my mates in the cable business!), it means we have to make the crossover more complicated, which is generally detrimental to the sound. Bi-amping makes a lot more sense, but this can still be done in a different configuration with single-wire speakers... (not so much the integrated + power amp route, but pre and mono's instead)

 

[SteveR750]

AEJim:Dan Turner:
In a bi-wire/amp-able speaker the crossover is split into 2 physically separate circuits - one attached between the high frequency binding posts and tweeter which filters out the low frequencies and one between the LF binding posts and the woofer to filter out the high frequencies. The link plates between the binding posts ensure that the signal reaches both from a single set of cables.

In my experience bi-amping is worth it, but where it comes to bi-wiring although you might notice a difference it's just as likely to be worse than better, and even if it is better, you'll get a bigger improvement by spending your whole speaker cable budget on a single run of better cable.

Most speaker manufacturers will readily admit to being sceptical about the benefits of bi-wiring and include the twin sets of binding posts either to facilitate bi-amping, or because of market expectation/demand.

As a speaker manufacturer - I don't like bi-wiring (sorry to my mates in the cable business!), it means we have to make the crossover more complicated, which is generally detrimental to the sound. Bi-amping makes a lot more sense, but this can still be done in a different configuration with single-wire speakers... (not so much the integrated + power amp route, but pre and mono's instead)

and from my experience the difference between integrated -> mono blocs is huge, mch bigger step than integrated -> bi-amping.