Biwire or Jumpers: which is better?

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.

The answer depends on the speakers. If the cross-over design is near optimal then there is no significant benefit from bi-wiring. But for many speakers, either the speaker drivers themselves, or the execution of the cross-over, provide quite different loads on the amplifier, or even cause a significant back-EMF from one driver to affect another. The Martin-Logan hybrid speakers are a good example where the difference in the characteristics of the driver elements means bi-wiring is valuable. A further example can be seen in many British mini-monitors where the cross-overs are kept very minimalist in the interests of resolution and immediacy, but at the expense of good driver impedence matching. At the other extreme, Thiel speakers have very sophisticated cross-overs and Jim Thiel claims that as a result there are no benefits from bi-wiring. Even though the electrical issues seem insignificant, the effect of bi-wiring is to star-earth the separate drivers at the amp. Without bi-wiring you are star-earthing at the speaker terminals (or somewhere in the cross-over itself in single-wired speakers like Thiels). Obviously star-earthing at the amp is better, but some would argue the very low resistance of the speaker cable makes the difference irrelevant. Nevertheless I have seen calculations that show even the very low resistance of a speaker cable is enough to create distortion through the lack of star-earthing at the amp. So to make a long story short - there is no general rule. Some speakers really do need to be bi-wired, whereas others do not. The problem with bi-wiring of course is that you have to spend twice as much on speaker cable than you otherwise would have, and you really should get as good a speaker cable as you can - most people underspend in this area.

I think the quality of the cable is more important the the size or the quantity of the cable. I believe bi-wired can improve sound, but just don't go for lower quality bi-wire instead of good quality single wire and jumpers.

Isn't a Red Kiwi a strawberry? Anyhoo, I agree with much of what you say here...BUT ISN'T THIS "PSEUDO SCIENCE"? I thought you were against pseudo science? (NOT that I think what you've discussed here IS "pseudo", but you seem to use that as a crutch to help your point of view when it suits you...it doesn't help, though...) I AM A SPEAKER DESIGNER, SO I KNOW A THING OR TWO ABOUT THIS: Biwiring is usually not worth the cost of the extra cable, but if the speaker comes with two sets of posts, you need to use a biwire cable. I AGREE, IT IS MORE IMPORTANT TO HAVE THE BEST CABLE POSSIBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE (since cable is in series with the signal's path, and thus HAS TOTAL AFFECT ON THE SIGNAL'S INTEGRITY...SCIENCE READILY VERIFIES THIS). The reasons many speaker designers don't provide bi-wire as an option is because INDEED, DIFFERENT CABLES BETWEEN AMP AND SPEAKER CAN AND DO CHANGE THE SPECTRAL BALANCE OF THE DIFFERENT DRIVER'S OUTPUTS. Not that I think Wilson Audio is great, but just ask David how he feels about biwiring. If I remember the quote correctly: "Why would we want the customer to screw with the spectral balance, after we spent the manhours to get it right"...It's not as if that isn't factored into the cost of the speaker, cause it is. I SAY IF THE SPEAKER HAS BIWIRING POSTS, THEN IT WILL ALWAYS BE BETTER TO USE A BIWIRED SPEAKER CABLE, because the binding posts have a huge signature on the signal! So, if you USE JUMPERS, YOU'RE RUNNING THROUGH TWO SETS OF BINDING POSTS INSTEAD OF ONE. And you have THREE sets of spade or banana connectors, instead of ONE. DON'T LET YOUR DEALER, OR ANYONE, FOOL YOU INTO THINKING THAT POSTS AND CONNECTORS DON'T HAVE A SIGNATURE. Even the best have one, AND IT'S MORE SEVERE THAN HIGH QUALITY CABLING...I've heard it myself, AND AGAIN MEASUREMENTS READILY VERIFY IT. I mean, even WBT's best posts are a partial brass alloy (I have several of these). Solid high quality silver spades might have the least signature of any connector, BUT IT'S STILL MUCH MORE PRESENT THAN THE BEST CABLING ALONE. I know Kimber recommends jumpers instead of two sets of cable for their Select series, BUT THERE ARE BETTER SILVER SPEAKER CABLES OUT THERE ANYHOW. In summation, jumpers are silly, don't use them!!

In your case Carl - a raspberry!