I run biwire and shot gun and it’s obvious to me it’s better. Nothing makes sense in this hobby anyway so why would biwire. Maybe it’s system dependent. Sounds good without biwire too, just different.
Biwiring make any sense?
I am on the verge of adding new floor standers to my setup as my room has enlarged. Options being considered are KEF R7 Metas and PSAudio Aspen FR10's. Both have biwireable terminals, the KEF has a jumper switch and the PS has jumper wires to bridge the terminals. The other option from dealing with the jumpers is to biwire the speakers. In this case I could run a banana and a spade off each output terminal. Is this even worth considering? Biamping is not something I'm interested in, as I already am running off an integrated amp. I had a pair of BassZillas before, each one of which had 3 sets of terminals, the top 2 being biwired, but that's a different deal (I don't have those cables anymore). Speaker comments would be welcome too. Amp is PSAudio Spectral Strata w/150 watts into 4 ohms.
65 responses Add your response
@lanx0003 wrote:
Of course, with vertical bi-amping you need similar amps so not to have different amps on the left and right channel - with all that could entail.
That’s the opportunity offered with horizontal bi-amping, yes - i.e.: using different amps for each left and right channel driver section - and as you’ve found out it can lead to desirable results. In your configuration, passively, it may also be the most if not the only sensible approach as there’s little to gain just by doubling up on the same amp here. If you're configuring outboard actively, however, like in my case, you’re bound to use the number of amplifier channels that corresponds with the number of individual driver sections per channel, and this can be done either vertically using similar amps per channel section (necessitated), or horizontally with similar or different amps (optionally). As your recently supplied video shows, this is where the real benefits of bi-amping occurs, on top of the advantage of active config. by coupling each amplifier channel directly to its driver section - sans intervening passive crossover between the amp and driver(s). Outboard actively my point is this: just because you can use different amps horizontally over each driver section it’s not to say you necessarily should. In fact, I’d argue you shouldn’t for the reasons mentioned in my earlier post, although I’m fully aware very good results can be had with a differentiated amp approach that is (to the ears of the specific listener) a sonically tailormade match to the respective driver section. Whatever floats one’s boat. Of course what I’m advocating means finding an amp that’s both sonically adept on up as well as sufficiently powerful/handling down low, which shouldn’t be too hard, especially if you have efficient speakers and potentially subs. Then it’s just a matter of multiplying into the number of amps required, and you’ll have the benefit of the same amplifier imprinting top to bottom. To my ears, this is not trivial. What about the excess power then to the top end since the max. and much higher power requirement is dictated by the lows? Yeah, what about it - does it hurt? Of course not, you’ll just have loads of headroom and an amplifier that’s relieved of the low end to boot, which means it’s cruising along effortlessly with ultra low distortion. If you could power differentiate with basically the same amplifier, by all means go ahead and do it, but be mindful that it may lead to slight sonic variations that may or may not be of significance. |
The KEF R7 Metas I am looking at have a switch to select for biwiring versus not. One would assume this would mean some crossover compatibility or at least negating the jumpers but I really don’t have any good way of knowing. I have two cable sets (Clear Day) so I can run a comparison without buying anything new. |
Biwiring can change the load on the crossover components and change the phase characteristics of the speaker. Biwiring sounds cleaner, essentially - IF the speakers are designed to take advantage of it. Vandersteen 2 is but one example.
Most wire is cheap. Get a roll of standard speaker wire at Best Buy or Walmart and experiment. If you don't hear a difference, what did you lose - maybe $25? |
I thought this got beaten to death on some thread in the past. Your speaker is a non-linear impedance/resistance and the cable also has resistance. Even when you apply a linear voltage to a driver, the current flow is nonlinear as a result. By biwiring, you are moving the true ground point directly to the amplifier from the speaker’s negative terminal. You remove the inter-driver non-linearity/cross contamination (back and forth) that occurs through the crossover between the different drivers (tweeter, woofer, etc) mentioned above. Maybe, if you had some crappy speaker with a single full range driver, it doesn’t matter (not applicable). On a regular speaker with multiple drivers, it does matter though the audibility impact of biwiring can vary due to the driver and crossover design. Low info dudes may claim bi-wiring does nothing. Truth is...it actually does something...that you may or may hear. If you didn’t hear it, great for you.... don’t bi-wire and do whatever, save yourself the cash for an extra cable. Return the extra cable and get your money back. Good luck. |
The only thing a designer could do to facilitate his speakers being bewired would be to have a switch disabling internal jumpers. As far as a circuit diagram would be concerned that wouldn't make any difference, just a physical connectivity difference. Considering the jumper mechanism that "might" make some sonic difference. Does that make any sense? |
I completely agree if we are discussing vertical bi-amping, where one amp powers one speaker and the second amp powers the other; in this case, the amps would need to be matched to achieve the best performance. In my case of horizontal bi-amping, which I believe is the context here, I was fortunate that the low-wattage class A amp I use for the tweeters has good synergy with the speakers. Although the class A amp lacks gain control, both the class A/B and D amps I’ve used for the woofers have gain controls, allowing me to fine-tune the loudness until tonal balance between the high and low ends is achieved. I’m pleased with the sound, though I believe this experience might be dependent on the specific speakers and amplifiers used, making it difficult to generalize.
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Pani, My experience w bi-wiring would concur w Vandersteen’s description. The bass very much became more controlled and defined(tighter) while detail in the midrange was more distinct and defined. Got better soundstage and imaging as well. And I say this w my Superamps being 1k solid state. However they are not portable space heaters. immathewj, The link to the graphic was just to illustrate one of the sources I used for configuring a bi-wire setup. Picture is a worth a thousand…. |
If your speaker’s crossover design and terminals are true biwiring, yes biwiring helps. But the value decreases with increase in amp power. That means, if your amps not very powerful wrt speakers, biwiring will be very useful. The audible gains are high. E.g A low power 30 watt class A amp to drive a regular 88db speaker will love biwiring. But if your amp is a 200 watter, for the same speaker the audible gains are much lower. Richard Vandersteen has nicely experimented and explained the reason biwiring works (only in true biwirable speakers). He said the bass frequencies typically ride on the outer layer of the speaker wire and highs ride in the inner layers. In a speaker with strong bass and lot of driver excursion the bass signals are very strong and they interfere with mids and highs signal riding in the cable. That cause muddying of highs and mids. Hence biwire cleans it up. The better the amp controls the speaker, the more controlled the signals ride in the wire too I have personally experimented and found this to be true. |
I saw your link, @84xfirez-51 , and that was what I based my reply on. I am pretty sure I understand what you reconfigured your biwire to. |
I posted a link to an image for bi-wiring. Yes, my cables were the same for each pair. Using the same cables I had for many years, I immediately noted the difference and improvement listening to music I have been very familiar w like Famous Blue Raincoat - Jennifer Warnes Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits That is what compelled me to try newer tech cables like the Shunyata Venoms. I have Venoms for my interconncts. |
True biwiring was made if you wires from the internal Xover had a separate wire from the Xover to the loudspeaker terminal, upgrading many speakers most biwiring on the terminals is fake ,a selling point get rid ofthe stock jumpers if they are metal straps pure junk. You want agood quality wire and quality connectors copper is far better then cheap Brass which most are unless you have say WBT connectors ,I have found if you connect the Speaker cables to the bottom you get a bit more if-you |
@84xfirez-51 , I am not saying that is not correct, because I don’t know; and I am not saying it wouldn’t work, because if the runs of cable are identical pairs I see no reason it wouldn’t work; I am just saying that I was always under the impression that speaker cables were routed from amp binding posts to speaker binding posts as per usual, and then another speaker cable came out of the same amp binding posts and went to the same speaker but connected to the other (unused) binding posts. But no biggy, if it works it works. As I typed, assuming all the cable runs are identical, I cannot see how it would make any difference which method you used. With the cables I was using, I would have been unable to do it the second way. I was using one grade of Kimber Kable to hook to my tweeter binding posts, and then I was using the next grade up of Kimber Kable to hook to my woofer/midrange driver binding posts. Thinking about it, I guess I could have used the smaller grade of Kimber for the grounds on both sides, but still, I had one of the pairs made with spades on the ends for the speakers and bananas on the amp end, therefore I wouldn’t have to double any of the spades up on top of each other at the amp end. (In other words, at the amp, the woofer pair of cables was connected via spades, and then the tweeter pair of cables was connected to the amp via bananas. |
I agree with tomic601. The physics is real. I biwired Martin Logan Request, very resolving speakers; biwire one and not the other and moving from speaker to speaker the improved resolution (Norah Jones voice emerging more distinctly from the mix) was very apparent, even to the wife! Haha! There is a reason higher end speakers are biwireable (beyond just a gimmick to make money.) I feel sorry for the denialists, they don't know what they are missing. |
Hmmm . . . @84xfirez-51 , if I am interpreting this correctly, the way you HAD it was you used one speaker cable to go to one set of speaker posts (to the woofer, for example) connecting one spade or banana to the + post (to the woofer) and then connecting the other spade or banana to the - post for the woofer. And then you took the other speaker cable and did the same thing for the tweeter + and - post. I always thought that this was the way bi-wiring was supposed to be done? So what you changed, and are doing NOW, if I understand you correctly, is that you are using one speaker cable, with both terminals of that cable connected to the + post of your amp, and you are connecting this cable to both the + to the woofer AND the + of the tweeter? And then you are hooking two from the - of the amp to both - posts of the speaker (- woofer and - tweeter) ? Well, I make no claims to be one of A’gons gurus, but I always thought the first way was the way it was usually done, but I guess that assuming you had the identical type of speaker wire pairs that you would essentially be doing the same way either way you did it . . . hmmm . . . that’s interesting.
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@84xfirez-51 , in what way were you not properly configured? There are not that many ways to do it, are there? One speaker cable goes to + and - of one set of speaker posts, and the second speaker cable goes to the + and - of the second set of speaker posts? |
Like u I’m pretty new to the bi-wiring game. My system is composed of Arnie Nudell’s Genesis iIM8300 3 way speakers w stands connected to Leach Mono Superamps via 2 pair of ARC Litzlink speaker cables. The Genesis will accomodate bi-wiring. For longer than I care to remember, I had the cabling configured conventionally using two pair of cables. Only recently did I realize I had not properly configured the connections. When I did properly connect in bi-wire config,it really was another level. I noticed less electrical noise in the background, a tighter bass and greater depth and detail. So much so that I decided to try a set of Shunyata cables built fir bi-wiring. And again it seemed to go an additional level in terms of depth, detail, and the bass was better controlled and placed. It has been certainly one of those “DUH” moments for me. |
If the speakers are properly designed for bi-wiring then it will make a difference but a lot of speakers have four terminals and they're not internally set up on the crossover to be bi-wired properly but it does make a difference if the speakers are properly designed, I have the monitor audio platinum 200g2 and when I bi-wired them the sound stage opened up even more. |
Sure, if you just had one set of terminals. Then you're basically giving yourself a fatter wire. No harm there if you already have those wires, but if you're just starting out just buy the bigger wire! If you have two sets of terminals, then you can avoid using jumpers, and maybe that's a positive. Beamping seems like it makes more theoretical sense, but then you're getting into the old cost vs benefit thing, which is ok. |
@kclone , I make no claim to have a real tight grasp on electrical theory, but it seems to me that what you have described would be sub-optimal. The signal would be starting out on what seems to me to be one gauge of wire but then arriving at the speaker on a narrower gauge of wire. What you could do in that scenario, I think, is if the termination at the speaker end was spades, you could double them up so you had two on each speaker post. |
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If you want to biamp and you have existing biwired cables, that means you have to Block off two extra ends that you don't use anymore and that's a pain in the neck. I wonder if that's a problem? The jumper is another issue, I think biwiring probably does a better good job then a jumper does and this is probably a good reason to get biwire Does this make sense? |
+1 @lanx0003 wrote:
It's a popular approach with differentiated amps throughout the frequency spectrum and one I've used myself actively with good results (albeit only with SS variants, i.e.: class A mated with class D/H), but ultimately I prefer using similar amps top to bottom actively (class A/B solid state as is), which is to say all the way down into the subs region to aid overall coherency and tonal imprinting. Tonality is very much founded in conjunction with the lower octaves, the extent of which actually surprised me, and the problem with shifts in tonal balance using different amps is potentially exacerbated with a combination of very different amp topologies/principles. Think of all the subs being sold with cheap built-in plate amps, most of them (by a mile) class D-based. If there were issues properly integrating subs already, it's not getting any easier for this very reason. And no, smooth acoustic room response (DBA, DRC) isn't all that matters here. People who balk at the notion of tonality as co-founded into the subs region and thus the importance of using similar amps top to bottom, will have to hold out on a verdict until experience is likely to tell them otherwise. Few are going to find out however as most don't power their subs with external amps of their own choosing, much less with similar quality amps top to bottom. For those using passively configured more or less full-range speakers with a single stereo amp, it's a non-issue (in this regard, unlike other aspects with passive config.), but augmented with separate subs it's usually another matter altogether. |
The physics are drop dead simple, the expanding and collapsing high current bass signal modulates HF… Easy to hear n a resolving system and listeners w open mind / ears. I have a set of moderately priced but very robust shotgun biwire cables i loan out… they have a hundred thousand miles on them…sadly none yet on the above mentioned bullet train to Yamaha…. maybe i will carry them on next time i’m in Japan…. |
Bi Wiring should make no difference unless you use undersized wire (as @carlsbad2 said) . If it does, then something else is going on to give that effect. The two "bi wire" signals are actually full range signals coming from the full range amplifier(s), remaining full range down the two cables (what you think is "HF" and "LF" cables) then inserted to the crossover and passively filtered to remove top end for the LF feed or remove low end from the HF feed, following the crossover's plan on where the signal is destined to go. The typical benefits of bi-amping (according to the old original definition of biamping that is still used in pro) was that an electronic crossover that operates at line level can do the separation work better with less error and then each amp can specialize in HF or LF. This gave obvious benefits as low end typically draws the most power from the amp and is usually the root cause of amp clipping (running out of power), causing you to hear a clip in the top end. Clipping is usually the reason tweeters die (from overheating trying to follow a clipped square wave); the dynamics of music is not linear but logarithmic, so dynamic music peaks can instantly demand many times the output of the average, often outstripping the amps ability to supply it. This is also one reason a larger amp usually sounds better than a smaller one of the same design.
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@dogearedaudio I caught your response out of the corner of my eye and wondered if I had already responded but didn’t recall. I have been listening to ProAc Response 2 speakers for more than 30 years. Everybody says I’m not supposed to hear differences from biwiring. But for me, the speakers sound taller and the soundstage is wider and deeper. My response to the question is to try it and see if biwiring works in your system. |
Bi-wiring opens your system up to more potential open circuits. Heavy gauge cable to a single set of posts with finished shrink wrapped heavy gauge jumpers is a better idea. Of course there are active designs with dedicated amplifiers for each driver but those circuits are protected inside the cabinet with onboard signal processing. If budget permits look at Yamaha NS 5000. There is an excellent display in Yamaha's Innovation Road museum in Hamamatsu, Japan, on a main Shinkansen line with a short subway ride. |
Bi-amping indeed offers a practical and effective way to optimize the performance of your speakers by dedicating different amplifiers to the high-frequency (HF) and low-frequency (LF) compartments. By using a low-wattage Class A or tube amp for the HF, you can achieve a sweeter, more refined sound in the treble range. On the other hand, a higher-wattage solid-state amp can provide the necessary power and control for the LF, delivering tighter and more impactful bass. Active crossover systems work on a similar principle by splitting the audio signal into different frequency bands before amplification. This allows each amplifier to handle a specific range, further enhancing the precision and clarity of the sound. Both approaches can significantly improve the overall performance of your audio system, offering more flexibility and control over the sound quality. |
@howardlee , it almost doesn’t matter what the subject is, the answers will range from "snake oil--it doesn’t have any effect on sonic performance" to "I hear a difference." Personally, I think it probably depends upon the speakers. If KEF or PSAudio provides any kind of tech support at all, it might be worth contacting them to find out what they think about b-wiring their speakers. At the time I bi-wired I was running a pair of B&W 805s (the Matrix series) and I think B&W was saying that those speakers would benefit from bi-wiring. I felt that I heard an incremental improvement. At the time (going on 30 years ago) I was continuously trying to make upgrades and subtle improvements as I was into "the sum of all parts" theory, and I looked at bi-wiring as just another one of the parts.
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I do this with AudioQuest KE-4 (15 AWG pure solid silver) up top and Mont Blanc (12 AWG solid copper) on bottom. Used to use this in my main rig, and now brought it back in my 2nd rig. Always liked this combo (going back 15 years), and still like it now. Have compared it to many other AQ models - symmetric double bi-wire, internal biwire, single wire. There’s 2 cable configurations I’ve liked better (both much more expensive), but I like this combo better than all the rest. The AQ hybrids - with copper & silver in one cable - are quite good, but no more effective that this mixed biwire, IMO. The knock against this approach would be a sacrifice of "coherence" from the asymmetric biwire - but I don’t hear ANY issues with coherence here. Silver helps bring out detail and sparkle. Copper keeps a nice overall warmth. And it all blends nicely. Speaking of coherence worries, my Tannoys pair a metal dome with a large paper cone - and they’re still incredibly coherent, to my ears! |
