Bi wiring poll

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Bi-Wiring

  • Yes, definitely.. for audible reasons

    Votes: 2 5.4%
  • Yes, definitely.. for other reasons

    Votes: 2 5.4%
  • I don't mind, either way it is ok

    Votes: 5 13.5%
  • No, it affects the midrange

    Votes: 2 5.4%
  • No, it doesn't do anything

    Votes: 22 59.5%
  • I don't know

    Votes: 4 10.8%

  • Total voters
    37
So reading that article that does make references to harmonic and modulation distortion as a means of seperating and tuning it out and allowing you to manually set the cross over to give you the cleanest possible sound. On the one hand Q Accoustics and QED are part of the same group, so they may have their own purpose for pushing this argument (to make you buy more of their cables). Others though do think differently. The below is worth a read:


Looking at this objectively, it does come back to what i was inferring to earlier. If we take the Q Accoustics article as is, and the reason for having this as an old school way to help reduce modulation distortion presented by the crossover filters (needed due to the distortion brought about by the increase of power), then the objective should be eliminating distortion to begin with to remove the need for those filters in the first place.

The most obvious recent example of this tech which ripped up the rule book and changed audio forever has been demonstrated by the THX AAA feed forward error correction technology.


The below i found a really good video that I recommend worth watching:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZw-PZFpcxw


Now whilst this tech has been implemented effecitvely in low power SOC headphone amp devices which became the benchmark that has turned the headphone industry on it's head, it would seem the difficulty of implementing this tech in Powered amplifiers must be harder....either that or companies are still taking advantage of consumers.

After trawling the internet, the only device that i've seen that has implemented this is the Benchmark AHB2. As such the AHB2 doesn't need the high and low filters, and the published distortion figures seem to be in another league to their competition.

On searching for it on ASR, Amir was fortunate enough to get one to review:


At this point this level of performance should be what everyone else should be using as a benchmark (pun not intended) if Powered/speaker amplifiers are going to have a chance of competing with Headphone amplifiers in quality distortion free audio.
Isn't this getting a little bit away from the OPs question?
 
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ThisIsJimmy

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Nov 11, 2020
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Isn't this getting a little bit away from the OPs question?
Sorry, my curiosity got the better of me on wanting to explore Bi-wiring. What circumstances you'd maybe want to use it and how it wouldn't be needed. On whether you need it, my summary would be: Depends on what your amp is.

More like a magical mystery tour……🙄
Don't you find learning something about audio magical or a voyage of discovery to you? Aren't all questions mystery's until you find an answer? It's only my opinion. You dont have to agree with it :rolleyes:
 

djh1697

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Nov 27, 2008
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I asked Derek from Kudos about bi-wiring, he said that the speaker crossovers should be designed correctly, and that he does not recommend it. Indeed his own speaker cable has only two conductors in it.
 
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MARKZERO

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Sep 30, 2021
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I did some experimenting with bi-wiring. The theory is that the high frequencies and low frequencies create different inductances within the cables which permit better signal transmission for each band of frequencies. I'm sceptical though and think this is probably 'snake-oil'!....Also the smaller the inline resistance - the better.
I have some Berriman DB9 speakers...these were homemade with some quality crossovers. The sound really good.The point here being that I initially used a single cable run (homemade QED79 strand with banana plugs) . But I got to thinking - let's try bi-wiring - not expensive with this cable ! Noticed little change. Then I looked again at the crossover inside. The inter-connecting wire between the low and high frequency tweeter stages was really fine wire. Sufficient of course, but I decided to isolate completely the two halves of the crossover such that a dedicated feed to both parts was supplied by each cable. So I de-soldered the interconnecting cable completely. The result - ever so slight(and I mean ever so slight) increase in resolution...hardly noticeable. Then I looked at the inline resistance. Both cables effectively connected in parallel reduce the line resistance but because my cables were home made I recorded between 0.5-0.6Ohms for the entire length....not great really, but ok.

I then used single cable and bi-wire cable on Monitor Audio Silver 500 speakers. Very little if any difference between these (again both cable sets were home made and soldered up to the plugs. This is in spite of the fact that Monitor Audio recommend bi-wiring their speakers.

I then bought some WitchHat SN2 cable - single runs this time. Before connecting I slung a voltmeter across them - for the same length the in line resistance was ~0.1Ohm (much lower than with my home made cables - these have a more sophisticated construction. Probably not a factor, but the behaviour of the cable must have brought something to the party? Tried them and with my set-up and the sound was .......really only slightly better than either QED cable set-up!.....although the consensus in my house was that they were slightly better overall. The WitchHat cable did have ever so slightly more clarity but IMHO you get very similar performance from basic cable.

Conclusion: Expensive speaker cable - not really worth it but does give a marginal improvement
Bi-wiring brings no appreciable benefit in all the practical tests I have done

I have spent time and money to offer this information - so hopefully you can save money!

BTW; there is an article I found the other day which tried a high end setup with ultra expensive speaker cable, cheap speaker cable and finally bent wire coat hangers and tested with a blind tested with a group. There was no firm conclusion as to which was better - opinions were divided .........I leave you to draw your own conclusions!
 

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