Chord Carnival Silver Screen Vs QED Silver Anniversary XT Biwire with Wharfedale Diamond 9.1

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Hi, I've just bought a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers which are biwireable, and I'm now looking to upgrade my speaker cable. Looking at the July issue, I see that the Chord Carnival Silver Screen outperforms the QED Silver Anniversary XT, but I'm wondering if buying the QED as a biwired cable would change this? Obviously it's more expensive, but I've found the Chord for £73 (2X4m terminated) and the QED biwire on special offer for £101 (also 2X4m terminated) which seems like a bit of a bargain. Or am I being daft for considering spending £100 on cables when the speakers were only £150? I'm not sure if it's worth the extra £30 to have the speakers biwired. At the moment I'm using an old technics system but I'll probably be getting the fatman itube valve dock in the future. Cheers.
 
Well, that's the thing: I'm not exactly set on biwiring them, it's just that for an extra £30 I wonder if it would be worth doing? They're both obviously good speaker cables, I'm just not sure how much difference it would make to biwire. I'll look into your Van Damme cable though, thanks.
 
Hi Lucy. Both are pretty good speaker cables for the money imho. You could consider cutting a 2 short lengths of speaker cable and use them as jumpers to bind the low freq set of terminals to the high frequency set of terminals. It should have the same effect and will save you a few bob too! good luck
 
I have an Arcam / Epos system (see below).

I used to have the Silver Anniversary XT but after a while felt the overall effect of the system was a touch overly bright. I demod some Chord Silverscreen with the offer to return them if i didnt find any improvement. The quick answer was they never went back - i found them instantly a much more balanced cable, bringing out a better bass defenition and more rounded treble. I cannot say if this works for other systems but for me the Chord Silverscreen was just what i was looking for. By the way i didnt bi-wire either cable.
 
[quote user="lucylondon"]
Jumpers? You've lost me....
[/quote]
On bi-wirable speakers, you'll have two sets of terminals. You'll see in between them will be a piece of flat metal, connecting the high frequency positive terminal to the low frequency positive terminal and the high frequency negative terminal to the low frequency negative terminal. These bits of metal are the jumpers. So Jaxon5 was suggesting replacing this little bit of metal with some of the cable you are using instead of bi-wiring them.
 
[quote user="lucylondon"]

Jumpers? You've lost me....

[/quote]

It's woolly mindedness.
emotion-1.gif
 
[quote user="lucylondon"]
Hi, I've just bought a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers which are biwireable, and I'm now looking to upgrade my speaker cable. Looking at the July issue, I see that the Chord Carnival Silver Screen outperforms the QED Silver Anniversary XT, but I'm wondering if buying the QED as a biwired cable would change this? Obviously it's more expensive, but I've found the Chord for £73 (2X4m terminated) and the QED biwire on special offer for £101 (also 2X4m terminated) which seems like a bit of a bargain. Or am I being daft for considering spending £100 on cables when the speakers were only £150? I'm not sure if it's worth the extra £30 to have the speakers biwired. At the moment I'm using an old technics system but I'll probably be getting the fatman itube valve dock in the future. Cheers.
[/quote]Spending £100 on speakers that cost £150- you've got to be kidding me ! Considering the itube valve dock is only 200 (at superfi) and the cost of your speakers, i'd urge you to buy either the itube or search for Gotham cables on ebay. Or buy some van Damme as suggested. If you later want to improve your system, best buy better speakers. This will give you far more improvement than going the cable route. IMHO cables do make a difference to a system, however not an awful lot and they don't need to be expensive.
 
sorry could be wrong but how will replacing the jumpers with speaker wire have the same effect as biwiring.

i thought the whole idea of biwiring is that you split the high and low frequencys for the whole sigal path back to the amp. surely this would have more effect than simply changing gold plated jumpers for speaker wire.
 
and to make them easier for the amp to drive the speakers by outputting th power from more channels
 
[quote user="matt444_2000"]
sorry could be wrong but how will replacing the jumpers with speaker wire have the same effect as biwiring.

i thought the whole idea of biwiring is that you split the high and low frequencys for the whole sigal path back to the amp. surely this would have more effect than simply changing gold plated jumpers for speaker wire.
[/quote]
Good question, I was just translating the word "jumpers", didn't want to get involved in the whole cable argument as I've done my quota for this month...
emotion-1.gif
 
i wasnt refering to your jumper explanation, i was talking about jaxons idea
 
You'd be crazy to spend that much on cabling imo.

Standard multi-strand copper will be more than adequate.

As for 'buy-wire' just stick to a single run and use a jumper
emotion-4.gif
 
[quote user="Solomon1"][quote user="lucylondon"]
Hi, I've just bought a pair of Wharfedale Diamond 9.1 speakers which are biwireable, and I'm now looking to upgrade my speaker cable. Looking at the July issue, I see that the Chord Carnival Silver Screen outperforms the QED Silver Anniversary XT, but I'm wondering if buying the QED as a biwired cable would change this? Obviously it's more expensive, but I've found the Chord for £73 (2X4m terminated) and the QED biwire on special offer for £101 (also 2X4m terminated) which seems like a bit of a bargain. Or am I being daft for considering spending £100 on cables when the speakers were only £150? I'm not sure if it's worth the extra £30 to have the speakers biwired. At the moment I'm using an old technics system but I'll probably be getting the fatman itube valve dock in the future. Cheers.
[/quote]

Spending £100 on speakers that cost £150- you've got to be kidding me ! Considering the itube valve dock is only 200 (at superfi) and the cost of your speakers, i'd urge you to buy either the itube or search for Gotham cables on ebay. Or buy some van Damme as suggested. If you later want to improve your system, best buy better speakers. This will give you far more improvement than going the cable route. IMHO cables do make a difference to a system, however not an awful lot and they don't need to be expensive.
[/quote]Hmmm, I did wonder if I was getting a bit carried away with speaker cable costs - although at £4 a metre, the van Damme isn't much cheaper once you've bought the plugs. I need 4 metres of cable for each speaker so it all adds up! Any suggestions for a cheaper option that will give a good enough sound with the Wharfedales and the itube? Will check out Gotham on ebay. Cheers.
 
[quote user="matt444_2000"]
sorry could be wrong but how will replacing the jumpers with speaker wire have the same effect as biwiring.

i thought the whole idea of biwiring is that you split the high and low frequencys for the whole sigal path back to the amp. surely this would have more effect than simply changing gold plated jumpers for speaker wire.
[/quote]

Hey matt. Controversial this one but I prefer to buy the highest quality single run of speaker cable and 'jump' them with some quality err jumpers. To biwire you'd generally have to choose a lower quality cable for a given budget to allow you to get 2 runs of cable per speaker. Anyhow not sure how much effect biwiring has TBH - some say the effect you notice is just from replacing the metal links supplied. I know this paramount to sparking off another cable debate but Russ Andrews is one advocate of jumper leads and there's some info as to why on the website

http://www.russandrews.com/category-Jumper-Cables-PSPEAJUMP.htm
 
Has anyone actually used both of the cables and found great differences ?
 

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