Correct wiring of jumper cables

[Vizzage]

Must admit I was wondering where you were going with that one!!

 

[Anonymous]

]I have seen this wiring idea on the Chord Company website[/b]. Positive to treble and negative to bass and of course jumpers but have not tried it yet myself, but will when I get new cables.

Exactly. I quote:

What connections on the back of the speaker should I connect my single wire speaker cable to?

As a general rule, the treble connections are usually reckoned to produce better sound quality than the bass connections. However, in many cases, we find that a diagonal connection produces the most musically coherent sound. To do this, connect the positive (+) speaker cable to the positive treble connection and the negative speaker cable (-) to the negative bass connection. So in effect, the cable is connected diagonally. This is quick, easy and fun to do and the results are easy to hear.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi galone, without a dissertation acknowledged by all world scientists as being sound, people will see this as at best marketing hype, or at worst the devils work trying to send our mortal souls to hell.

I wonder if all the detractors have tried the asymmetric method or are just unwilling to try because science hasn't 100% proved the theory.

 

[Baldrick1]

Wow...there is a very strong echo in this thread.

:rofl:

 

[crang]

HI

No your not the only one! Been on this forum nearly 5 years I am astonished that this has not come up before .

I have had my BX2s bi-wired and single wired with links made up of Maplins OFC cable with + to bottom red - to bottom black, tried + to treble - to bass YES there is a real difference even detected by my philistine OH!

The main differences are 1 tighter bass . 2 better seperation with instruments more clearly defined in their own "space".

wierd!

 

[Baldrick1]

HI

No your not the only one! Been on this forum nearly 5 years I am astonished that this has not come up before .

I have had my BX2s bi-wired and single wired with links made up of Maplins OFC cable with + to bottom red - to bottom black, tried + to treble - to bass YES there is a real difference even detected by my philistine OH!

The main differences are 1 tighter bass . 2 better seperation with instruments more clearly defined in their own "space".

wierd!

:bounce: :dance: :cheers: :cheer:

 

[Vizzage]

Ok. So i've been a-tryin' this thing about putting red to treble, black to bass. Obviously I can't tell the differenc bcoz I'm a philistine. But it's occured to me that my speaker cable is more than twice the length it needs to be. I've hesitated to shorten it bcoz it's so valuable. But should I in fact chop it in half and bi-wire my speakers? Does bi-wiring mean you shove both wired into the output on the amp, have both cables running to the speaker, and plug one into the treble red & black, and the other cable goes into the bass red & black? Is it much better?

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

 

[Anonymous]

+1

 

[RobinKidderminster]

Worries that biamp and biwire are confused. If biamped.u MUST remove links.

 

[BigColz]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

+1 for don't bother bi wiring or cut expensive cables

using two amps, one for treble and one bass is bi-amping and can bring benefits as its twice the power

 

[Vizzage]

Yeah it's all coming from the same terminals on the amp (1 red one, and 1 black one). I might one day splash out on another couple of Tornado monoblocs. But seeing as that means yet another grand piano for the wife I'll not be doing that yet.

 

[andyjm]

Ok. So i've been a-tryin' this thing about putting red to treble, black to bass. Obviously I can't tell the differenc bcoz I'm a philistine. But it's occured to me that my speaker cable is more than twice the length it needs to be. I've hesitated to shorten it bcoz it's so valuable. But should I in fact chop it in half and bi-wire my speakers? Does bi-wiring mean you shove both wired into the output on the amp, have both cables running to the speaker, and plug one into the treble red & black, and the other cable goes into the bass red & black? Is it much better?

Strangely, of all the posts on this thread, this post makes the most sense. The best speaker cable is the shortest, fatest speaker cable. Resistance is the overriding factor when evaluating speaker cable performance. Keep your cables as short as you can. Running two in parallel effectively doubles the cross sectional area of the conductor and halves the resistance.

 

[andyjm]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

+1 for don't bother bi wiring or cut expensive cables

using two amps, one for treble and one bass is bi-amping and can bring benefits as its twice the power

isnt the point of having expensive speaker cable to improve sound quality? Why compromise that by having cables twice the length required?

 

[BigColz]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

+1 for don't bother bi wiring or cut expensive cables

using two amps, one for treble and one bass is bi-amping and can bring benefits as its twice the power

isnt the point of having expensive speaker cable to improve sound quality? Why compromise that by having cables twice the length required?

ok then send then off to the company they're made by, get them cut in half both proffesionally terminated (chord were very helpfull/reasonable when getting my epics re terminated) and sent back then sell one set... :cheers:

 

[Vizzage]

Strangely, of all the posts on this thread, this post makes the most sense.

Sir, I thank you

 

[CnoEvil]

Strangely, of all the posts on this thread, this post makes the most sense.

Sir, I thank you

Making more sense than us lot is setting the bar pretty low........so not necessarily a complement! :twisted:

 

[Vizzage]

Haha

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

+1 for don't bother bi wiring or cut expensive cables

using two amps, one for treble and one bass is bi-amping and can bring benefits as its twice the power

isnt the point of having expensive speaker cable to improve sound quality? Why compromise that by having cables twice the length required?

A metre or two either way won't change your speaker cable performance one jot. Wikipedia gives some good rules of thumb for maximum speaker lengths based on wire gauge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire

BTW - the higher the number the smaller the wire - it comes from the number of times the wire would have to be drawn down through a die to achieve a given diameter, so think of 16-gauge wire as requiring 16 draws, 22 as requiring 22 draws or steps.

So unless you live in Blenheim Palace I wouldn't worry

What happens if you keep cutting speaker wires down in length is you end up with a huge collection of jumper cables for bi-wire speakers....

 

[andyjm]

What has been talked about above is instead of bi-wiring, not in addition to it.

If you only have one set of speaker terminals on your amp, or "Zone A" and "Zone B" terminals fed by the same power amp or amplifiers inside the box, you won't get much benefit from bi-wiring, as I think most will agree. The main benefit from bi-wiring comes when you have two power amps. If these are both stereo-only, you use on to drive the trebles, the other to drive the bass. Some designs can be run in twin mono mode, with one box used to drive each speaker.

Therefore I would not advise cutting your cables in half, just for the experiment. In fact I would NEVER advise anyone to cut up expensive cables.

+1 for don't bother bi wiring or cut expensive cables

using two amps, one for treble and one bass is bi-amping and can bring benefits as its twice the power

isnt the point of having expensive speaker cable to improve sound quality? Why compromise that by having cables twice the length required?

A metre or two either way won't change your speaker cable performance one jot. Wikipedia gives some good rules of thumb for maximum speaker lengths based on wire gauge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_wire

BTW - the higher the number the smaller the wire - it comes from the number of times the wire would have to be drawn down through a die to achieve a given diameter, so think of 16-gauge wire as requiring 16 draws, 22 as requiring 22 draws or steps.

So unless you live in Blenheim Palace I wouldn't worry

What happens if you keep cutting speaker wires down in length is you end up with a huge collection of jumper cables for bi-wire speakers....

Tough to know where to start on a thread like this. On one hand there are a group of posters who believe introducing 2 inches of thick conductive jumper plate into a speaker circuit is clearly audible, and there are others who think introducing a metre here or there of speaker cable makes no difference. Can't be both now, can it.

At the risk of bringing facts into the discussion, 1 metre of speaker cable will have at least 20 times the resistance of a jumper plate, probably much more.

 

[Vizzage]

What happens if you keep cutting speaker wires down in length is you end up with a huge collection of jumper cables for bi-wire speakers....

haha reminds me of my sisters friend who, after her granny died, was helping with clearing out the things and found a jam jar with the label "bits of string, too short to be of any use"

 

[Vizzage]

]

On one hand there are a group of posters who believe introducing 2 inches of thick conductive jumper plate into a speaker circuit is clearly audible, and there are others who think introducing a metre here or there of speaker cable makes no difference. Can't be both now, can it.

yes, if there's an inverse relationship between length and making a difference ("less is more" ;-) )

Otherwise, good point.

 

[andyjm]

]

On one hand there are a group of posters who believe introducing 2 inches of thick conductive jumper plate into a speaker circuit is clearly audible, and there are others who think introducing a metre here or there of speaker cable makes no difference. Can't be both now, can it.

yes, if there's an inverse relationship between length and making a difference ("less is more" ;-)

Otherwise, good point.

I am sure your point was tongue in cheek, but before we get a whole series of daft posts, the implication of 'less is more' is that an infinitely short piece of wire will have an infinitely large effect. Which of course it doesn't.

 

[Vizzage]

I meant less is more + c

 

[Vizzage]

Seriously though, resistance is inversely proportional to diameter, so why are speaker wires so thin? I mean 79 strand? Why not 179? And why do we not hear advice about double or treble wiring? I assume because of diminishing returns.