Biwire or Jumpers: which is better?


A salesman recently told me that jumpers provide better sound that biwiring. The store is very upscale, all the usual hi end brands and prices. Any comments?
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Showing 1 response by garfish

I have used Vandersteen 2Ces, 3As, and 3A sig.-- all are specifically designed for biwiring, and the Vandersteen manual says if you can't afford to biwire when you first get the speakers, do it as soon as possible as it will yield a significant music improvement. I also talked to Richard Vandersteen by 'phone, and he said they had done extensive listening tests at their factory and concluded that biwiring was definitely superior on Vandersteen speakers. RV did not recommend any specific brand of cable, he just said "there are a lot of good ones; let your ears be the judge". I took this to mean that Vandersteen has no particular interest in selling speaker cables. I have always biwired the 'steens with excellent results. It seems to me that if a designer built them to be biwired, they should be biwired to realize the ful potential of the design (unless of course they were designed by a lousy designer, but R. Vandersteen is an excellent speaker designer, and I trust his word). Not all good speakers are designed to be biwired, eg I don't think thiel speakers are, and their excellent reputation speaks for itself.