Bi-Wire


Why did Nordost stop making bi-wire cables?

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Nordost said at the time because single wire with a jumper sounded better than internal biwire...I agree with this, and many speaker companies do too, though of course there is endless debate about it...

Because they believe, for the same money,  you are better off buying further up the product line and using jumpers.

When I discussed this with their rep a few years back, I was told that they now believe that bi-wiring leads to phase distortion. Whether this is in fact correct, I do not know...BUT I certainly do NOT have that issue with my bi-wire Nordost set up.

Their new recommendation for bi-wire set ups is to only use two runs of speaker cable per channel...which of course from their perspective makes a LOT of sense $$$ wise! 

I would think bi-wire with a jumper would sound better than without a jumper. Anybody try this?

Vandertseen strongly recommends dual speaker cables to each speaker...I also prefer this, and then jumpers as second choice...Richard Vandersteen writes about this on their website forums...agree or not it's interesting reading...

@jl35 , +1.

Mr. V. swears by bi-wire. And, if bi-wiring leads to phase distortion, then Vandersteen would never use it, as his speakers are time/phase aligned.

B

Re-post

 

Without prejudice to the effects that the absolute benefits are always system dependent, some of the high-end quality build brands are moving away from bi-wiring in favour of shotgunned runs and jumpers. Biamping ... Different story.

E.g. NORDOST 

http://info.nordost.com/norse-biwirejumpers-instructionguide?hsCtaTracking=539d9cb3-f0c8-4afa-97d4-1f83373d61fc%7C59027425-9a71-45ef-8a3b-6f75b6f27acf


 


CHORD

http://www.chord.co.uk/help-and-informa ... ngle-wire/

".... Many hi-fi and home cinema loudspeakers have two pairs of binding posts. This allows the speaker to be either bi-wired using two sets of loudspeaker cable or bi-amped using two amplifiers.

As a general rule (and there will always be exceptions) we tend to find that bi-wiring will open out the sound stage and increase perceived levels of detail. However, single wiring will often sound the most musically coherent. There is also an issue with single and bi-wire speaker cables. In all the research we have carried out, a single wire speaker cable out-performs a bi-wire cable of equivalent cost. This makes a lot of sense; the single wire speaker cable has two high quality conductors and the bi-wire cable requires four. So for a given budget, we believe that a single wire cable will always out-perform the equivalent bi-wire cable, so much so that we no longer produce dedicated bi-wire cables..."

For me, shotgunned NORDOST Freys with matched FREY jumpers bested a liked biwired configuration in my high-end system at that time.

Thank you for all the information. In my experience bi-wire works better than jumper with my Tannoy Kensington GR’s. I wish they didn’t stop making bi-wire cause it seems like system dependent with what works better.Â