True or mumbo-jumbo? A bi-wire question

[plastic penguin]

A few years ago a well known retailer explained a few things about bi-wiring, and in the light I'm upgrading after Christmas, can you tell me if its fact or folly?

a) Bi-wiring tightens bass.

b) Overall clarity is superior when bi-wired.

c) Volume decreases slightly when bi-wired.

I appreciate any constructive advice, like Joel I don't want this thread turned into a circus.

Thank you, PP

 

[Anonymous]

I used to bi wire my old MA Silver 8i's. Whilst I found two runs of the same cable didn't offer much improvement but using a silver cable for bass and a copper cable for treble or vice versa did help to fine tune the sound. Either way, the differences were not huge. In the end I used one run of cable and made a jumper out of the same cable and removed the brass links on the speaker terminals.

 

[Tonya]

As long as you bi-amp your system when you bi-wire it, you will hear a world of difference.
Depending on your setup, you can then decide the exact crossover frequencies and signal energy that is fed to each driver.
One step above this is called tri-amping with separate dedicated amplification stages for bass, midrange and treble.
A system like this is usually used in big rigs but I've seen esoteric home systems built this way.
The difference in pure energy and ability to handle difficult transients, quite simply put, is quite amazing.

Stating the obvious here (apologies to all techies here for stating the obvious), from a purely technical standpoint, bi-amping is superior as the bass amp only has to reproduce the lower end of the frequency spectrum, as the higher frquencies are taken care of by another dedicated amplifier.
That's why most subwoofers are always self-powered and dramatically improve the bass register without putting an extra strain on the existing amplification system one may have.

However you do have to ensure that you get the right frequencies on your electronic crossover and getting the balance perfect is a fine art!

Some studio monitors are bi-amped internally, so you just have to feed them a digital signal and mains power and you're good to go.

 

[plastic penguin]

Thanks guys. I've been tinkering this morning, found some rubbishy old Gale copper speaker wire I purchased from Richer sounds back in ninteen hundred and frozen to death.

I've connected my Carnival Silver to the high frequency and the Gale to the bass/mid-band. It sounds a little more detailed but the Gale lacks bottom end punch. So i'm not sure whether the extra detail is picked up because of the lack of punch? In saying that, it sounds pleasant, if unspectacular.

Any ideas?

 

[nads]

tried bi wireing but did not find much if any change. used better cables and got a whole lot better.

then bought more of the same cable and bi amped. would not consider Bi wiring unless i was trying to fix a problem by masking something.

 

[Anonymous]

Bi wiring will have an effect for the reasons I stated over in JoelSims thread.

 

[plastic penguin]

Completed a days test. I've tried the Gale with my Carnival Silvers as a bi-wire configuration, and also connected the Gales as single wired. The main conclusion is: how did I listen with these cables for so long? The only recommendation I could make is if you have a bright system, they will certainly tame it.....

In every other respect, the Silvers produced more.....err, just more of everything and better defined too.

Thanks again.

 

[Frank Harvey]

I have found in the past that some speakers respond beter than others to bi-wiring. Some would show quite a difference, whereas others showed very little, if anything at all.

 

[JoelSim]

plastic penguin:

Completed a days test. I've tried the Gale with my Carnival Silvers as a bi-wire configuration, and also connected the Gales as single wired. The main conclusion is: how did I listen with these cables for so long? The only recommendation I could make is if you have a bright system, they will certainly tame it.....

In every other respect, the Silvers produced more.....err, just more of everything and better defined too.

Thanks again.

But how can they sound any different, blah blah blah... it's just 'wire'

Did you try the Gales and the Silverscreens the other way round?

 

[gpi]

JoelSim:plastic penguin:

Completed a days test. I've tried the Gale with my Carnival Silvers as a bi-wire configuration, and also connected the Gales as single wired. The main conclusion is: how did I listen with these cables for so long? The only recommendation I could make is if you have a bright system, they will certainly tame it.....

In every other respect, the Silvers produced more.....err, just more of everything and better defined too.

Thanks again.

But how can they sound any different, blah blah blah... it's just 'wire'

Did you try the Gales and the Silverscreens the other way round?

I have aways favoured a 2-4 configuration if the speakers have two or more sets of posts. With my present Ruarks, they have three sets - bass, mid and tweeter. The thin brass links were connected between the bass and mid posts when I bought them so I bi-wired one set of those with the top tweeter posts. Recently I took the brass links out and two fell out onto the floor so there were two to each set of posts. Ruark supplied enough to link all three sets of posts and use single run cable. I have now replaced the brass links between the bottom two sets of posts with some home-made jumpers of Black Rhodium S300 {silver-plated copper) and instantly heard an improvement. Now I have replaced the (crappy? No way) Gale Symphony 400 (now called Cambridge Audio Symphony 400) with Chord Carnival Silverscreen bi-wire and my Ruarks are singing beautifully. I am of the opinion if you can separate the bass/mids with the treble it will give a cleaner signal with one connection not interfering with the other. That's about as technical as I'll attempt to go, lol. I won't be experimenting with other configurations, such as trying single wiring because I have far better things to do and as I said in another thread recently, once I have decently-made and well-regarded cable installed I'll be happy as larry.

 

[plastic penguin]

JoelSim:plastic penguin:

Completed a days test. I've tried the Gale with my Carnival Silvers as a bi-wire configuration, and also connected the Gales as single wired. The main conclusion is: how did I listen with these cables for so long? The only recommendation I could make is if you have a bright system, they will certainly tame it.....

In every other respect, the Silvers produced more.....err, just more of everything and better defined too.

Thanks again.

But how can they sound any different, blah blah blah... it's just 'wire'

Did you try the Gales and the Silverscreens the other way round?

I hope that was a 'leg pulling' statement, Joel. Yes I did try them the other way round - with similar results. The copper Gales deprived the Arcs of definition, transpancy, detail and taut bass.

 

[plastic penguin]

Help, I'm in trouble! My puny system sounds great......

Since replacing my Carnival Silver + cables last night, my system sounds fab. I mean really superior to how it sounded before; having checked to make sure everything is connected identically, both amp end and speakers. I'm not talking subtle changes; better clarity, detail and tauter bass to boot.

You could put it down to cleaning the posts and wires etc, but I would of thought that would be minimal, the improvement is fairly significant. What concerns me is I've had the amp 5 years and it seems I'm only starting to hear it at its best, yet I can't fathom out what I've done differently......