ways of biwiring a pair of speakers

[MeanandGreen]

Connecting his speakers to the A and B outputs will make no difference to bi-wiring. The A+B outputs are simply paralel outputs from the same two amplifier modules (left and right channel)

From a PM7004 you will get no benefit over loosing money by buying double the amount of cable.

Bi-Amping gives no electrical benefit if you are using two of the same seperate amplifiers, unless the amplifier is poorly designed and cant cope with the impedance/phase angles of the speaker. Using two of the same amps wont help this.

In simple terms, If your amp is rated at 50wpc, and you have two in bi-amp, you will still only get a maximum of 50w. You dont get 100w of potential output.

Some people use two different amplifiers (as mentioned) for treble and mid-bass, this may bring a difference but it wont be correct as the amplifiers will have slightly different gain, frequency response, output impedance etc so you will be hearing the difference between two amplifiers rather than anything 'better'.

You would be better off just using one 'better' amplifier or going down the DIY route and making the speakers active to gain any real possible improvement.

I will say that i agree with this, what you've said here is electrically spot on

 

[MeanandGreen]

I think that the 2 wiring schemes I provided on my first message are electrically equivalent, and the workload on the amplifier should be the same, but I am not sure of the latter. In my case, I use a Marantz PM 7004 amplifier connected to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins DM 602 S3 loudspeakers.

My question was whether is better to use 2 pairs of single cables or 1 pair of biwired cables. My diagrams show both configurations.

Your two chosen options will electrically make no difference. The same amp is seeing the same load.

I have Bowers & Wilkins DM 601S3 biwired with QED silver anniversary driven by a NAD C350 and now a NAD C326BEE. I originally had the speakers single wired with the same QED cable. The only effect from biwiring was being £80 down in my wallet after adding the second cable run. There was no difference in the sound.

 

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for the feedback received so far.

Finally, I will go for an standard wiring (not bi-wired), probably with a pair of Chord Oddyssey speaker cables . In the future perhaps I will upgrade to Epos Elan 15 speakers. I could not find any user experience or review on the Internet regarding those Epos.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

FWIW and my last contribution (unless someone flames me and I feel it necessary to respond),:

Back in the days when the World was black and white, illuminated by whale oil, people walked funny and Jimmy Savile was still thought a nice guy, the idea of bi-wiring was that some cables conduct different parts of the signal better than others. If I remember correctly, and it may seem contrary to logic (which is why I usually remember such things) the idea was a multi-strand cable conducts bass best, whereas a single-strand conducts treble best. Might get flamed on that one, but that's how I remember it.

This lead to to the whole phenomenon of people bi-wiring, even with only two terminals on their amps and two on their speakers, and even some compound speaker cables with both multi-strand and solid core (or asymmetric solid cores). I think I still have the remnants of a pair of Ixos cables of this sort somewhere left over from the 90s - they sound rubbish by comparison to contemporary stuff I'm sure.

Bottom line for the OP, in my opinion spend the money on two runs of better quality 2-core cables, not four two-core cables or two four-core bi-wire cables, and some jumper cables (made from the same cable or better - thicker - than the main speaker cables) to replace the brass brackets on the speakers. Job done.

If / when you add a power amp (or two) that is the time to bi-amp and bi-wire. Use the same cable as before and make sure the lengths are the same, flog the jumpers on EBay.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

Thank you all for the feedback received so far.

Finally, I will go for an standard wiring (not bi-wired), probably with a pair of Chord Oddyssey speaker cables . In the future perhaps I will upgrade to Epos Elan 15 speakers. I could not find any user experience or review on the Internet regarding those Epos.

Now the debate will be whether you should connect the main speaker cables to the treble terminals and run the jumpers to the bass terminals or the other way around. You watch:roll:

 

[Anonymous]

I will follow the recommendations from the Chord Company website :

"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."

 

[Aled Clayton]

sorry for being a numpty but can someonw draw the wiring setup using a reciever with a bi-amp function- especially if the vertical bi-amp is better would be good to see this schematically.

PS i currently am bi-wiring, and am utterly convinced this is a big improvement, in trebble detail, and openness. (bass on my system always a bit wolly to be honest)

 

[Aled Clayton]

sorry for being a numpty but can someonw draw the wiring setup using a reciever with a bi-amp function- especially if the vertical bi-amp is better would be good to see this schematically.

PS i currently am bi-wiring, and am utterly convinced this is a big improvement, in trebble detail, and openness. (bass on my system always a bit wolly to be honest)

 

[tomlinscote]

On my onkyo receiver the bi amp function works between speakers A and the surronud back channels so you use the front A left for the left treble and the left rear surround channel for the left bass and so on for the right hand side. Then in the set up menu tell the amp it is bi-amping the fronts and the rear surround channels disappear from the auto calibrate menu etc.

Can you download the manual for your receiver as it might be better explained there?

Tommo

 

[davedotco]

Bi-wiring and bi-amping is a simple topic, complicated only because of the fact that there are a number of options that need to be considered separately. It is clear from this thread that some people find it a little confusing so this explanation starts with the basics and goes ftom there. Apologies for those of you who know all this, but for those who don't.........

All conventional passive speakers, other than those that use a single full range driver, contain a crossover, sometimes very simple, just a capacitor perhaps, sometimes much more complex. The crossover does two things (in a two way system) it filters out high frequencies from the bass driver and low frequencies from the tweeter, simple as that. Usually the crossover is a single circuit with one input from the amp and two ouputs to the drive units, but sometimes the circuit that filters the signal to the bass unit is electrically (sometimes physically) separate from the circuit that filters the signal to the tweeter, so two inputs to two separate 'half' filters to two drive units.

About 20 or 25 years ago someone came up with the idea that, in the case of speakers with two separate half filters, it would be possible to wire each filter separately back to the amplifier improving the connection by being more direct. It was also considered that such a connection would improve the separation of the filters one from the other. This was called bi-wiring.

Similarly if such a speaker was wired back to two separate but matched power amplifiers such that one amplifier drives left and right bass drivers and the the other left and right tweeters, this is bi-amping, in this case 'horizontally'. If two identical power amplifiers are used such that one channel drives the bass driver and the other channel drives the tweeter in the same speaker, this is also bi-amping, in this case vertically.

You can run variations on this by using different types of cable for low and high frequencies, different amplifiers for low and high frequencies and propably others that do not at this moment come to mind.

Final point, using 4 channels of a multi-channel (AV?) amplifier that has a single power supply, means that the designations horizontal or vertical bi-amping is meaningless in this case.

It is my personal view that none of these techniques are worth the expense of implementing them, but others think differently.