biwire? and best way to do it?


Hi folks!

Was playing around with my Wharfedale EVO 4.4s, trying to get more bass weight - changed the bananas from one HF and one LF to both LF, and WHOA. All of a sudden the kick drum is in the room. Just what I was looking for. This was the first time I had noticed difference with the speaker wire position.

Then for fun, i moved both bananas to the HF. And WOW the AMT tweeter just sparkles - so much air and detail. But the bass weight went away.

So question for all you fine folks is two-fold:

1) Would bi-wiring give me the best of both worlds? That more sparkly tweeter with that heavy bass? Or would i really need to bi-amp them? I’m running them with a Rega Elicit-R.

2) How best to do it? Get premade 4-bananas-to-2-bananas Canare 4S11 cables from Blue Jeans, or just but some stacking bananas for my amp and run more of the Belden 10AWG wire I have? Or some other trick you might have?

BTW my cable run is ~12 ft, maybe a little longer.

TIA for your thoughts!

leemaze

Showing 1 response by williewonka

@leemaze - So it appears you have not bi-wired at present, and I am assuming you are using the little jumpers that come with bi-wire speakers?

Get rid of the jumpers and replace them with copper wire jumpers - make each jumper about 20" long.

The jumpers that come with the speakers can be made from other metals but not copper - which accounts for the differences you are observing

You can even try Romex to start with - just to see if it improves things.

Use either 14 or 12 gauge wire.

If that works you can improve things even more by using a double strand of wire for each jumper and upgrade to UP-OCC copper wire

UP-OCC copper is superior to pure copper and even OFC copper.

You should be able to achieve a nice balance of the two improvements you mention but without moving the cables from one set of terminals to the other and without the expense of bi-wire cables

I actually tried bi-wire cables and changed back to the UP-OCC copper wire  jumpers because of improved clarity and image achieved with a single cable.

The money I would have spent on a bi-wire cable I invested in better "normal" speaker cables.

Hope that helps - Steve