Bi Wiring - Any Good

I view all of this as suspect and voodoo. But, after listening to a bunch of cables, I selected a bi-wire with one one of those "mystery matrix" thingees in them. Oh well, trust your ears.

I view all of this as suspect and voodoo. But, after listening to a bunch of cables, I selected a bi-wire with one one of those "mystery matrix" thingees in them. Oh well, trust your ears.

Bi-Wire works best if the speaker has the X-over sections separated (hi-pass / low-pass). Actually, just separating the X-O improves most speaker's sound. Have done this on DCM TimeWindows, NHT Super Zeros (had to relocate the X-O outside the cab). In both cases, restructuring the X-O made the speakes sound better; wider soundstage, better imaging, tighter bass, clearer highs. Going to bi-wire improved the sound again, but not as dramatically as the X-O work. OTOH, w/ better designs built w/ sep. X-O boards, going from single to bi-wire, the change in sound is not as noticable. One idea that doesn't seem to work (at least not for me) is to use diff. type cable for the lows and highs (ie: 10 ga monster for the lows and DH Silver for the highs). I've tried it sev. times and have yet to find a combo that sounded as good as matched bi-wire runs.

I just built a set of bi-wires for my paradigms and the sound is so much better. These bi wires are built like alon black orpheus wires and cost me about 60.00 to build. you can find out how to build them at www.tnt-audio.com. They are called the fffr i think. They use cat 5 wire.

Crossovers can be "parallel" or "serial". In the former the bass and treble signals are split before processing; in the latter the signal passes through some components before it is split. Almost all crossovers are "parallel" because they are far easier to design. A "serial" crossover cannot be biwired. A "parallel" crossover can be biwired, and since it is fashionable all of them offer dual binding posts. Biwiring usually improves the sound, but it is not clear why, as the only difference is splitting the signal two meters further up the wire. Could it be that biwiring is like using a thicker wire? I noticed that the more simple the crossover, the better the improvement.