Benefit of Tri or Quad Wire compared to Bi wire

Yeah, there was a picture in one issue that showed Lipnick in his listening room with those speakers, and they filled up the whole room, it seemed!

Thanks. Now, I recall those room dividers. ;-)

Kal

Kal, check the archives at Stereophile, I think Richard is referring to the B&W 800s that Lewis Lipnick had and reviewed back in the 90s?

Well, I did miss your reference to "big B&W800's" but I also tried to Google them and could find no references. Can you provide one?

Kal

Kr4,

As I stated, mine are the big 800's, not the N800.

The benefit of actively biamping with quad wiring of the 800's is not a subtle improvement! The active biamping, with the Krell KBX, was the biggest single impovement that I have ever made to my system.

Know before thy speak. :)

Richard
PS> I know of one guy that had his 800's set up as I do. Before selling them he bought the N800S. He compared the two in his own home and sold the N800S.

My personal experience is there may be some benefit separating the LF from the MF/HF, but beyond that I would upgrade to a higher quality cable before buying more of a lower quality cable, given the same amount of money to work with. That is what I did with my tri-wired Alon's which ended up sounding better with a better quality bi-wire pair and jumpers. Keep in mind there are a lot of influencing factors including the added capacitance resulting from more wire. Therefore, each case can be different.

Quad-wired? I saw only 4 speaker terminals on the N800s I had making bi-wiring the maximum possible.

Bi-amped and quad-wired? Seems more than compulsive.

Kal

To restate my situation:

I have the big B&W800's that were designed to be quad wired, and therefore everyone that I have know quad wired them.

There are the lucky few of us that have also actively biamped them with quad wiring.

Richard

A friend of mine has speakers that are capable of being tri-wired. For years he had them bi-wired, and then when he had an opportunity he began testing tri'd configurations. He hit on one that works a lot better in his system than his bi-wired arrangement. YMMV, of course. But the downside is that finding the right combination of speaker cables in a tri-wired configuration could be enough to drive you mental.

A waste of mo wire.

I found that quad wiring was better than biwiring on my speakers, but the orginal jumpers that the speakers came with were of relatively poor quality.

Richard

If that's what he said, Robert Harley was wrong. One of the effects of bi-wiring is to change [slightly] the way the crossover behaves. You are essentially adding some resistance, capacitance, and inductance into the circuit that divides the signal between the drivers. The changes you make might be for better or for worse. If the designer of the speaker did a good job, you should use the same wiring system he did when he designed the crossover. If he used single wiring when he designed the crossover, changing from single wire to bi-wiring will only mess up his design. If he used bi-wiring, then you need to find out what wire he used, and in what lengths, so you can simulate the conditions under which he approved the design. Likewise for tri- or quad- wiring.