Yep, I was referring to Audience's "AU24", their top of the line speaker cable. Sorry that I was not more specific. It is copper, and I don't know the gauge. It's a thin cable but sounds like a big cable, I don't know how they do it. |
AU24 is the product name for a speaker cable from Audience (www.audience-av.com). It's thin, but not AWG24 thin. And it's copper. |
tweeter first sounds better to me too |
Artmaltman...By "AU24" I suppose you mean AWG24 wire made of silver. In spite of being silver, such small wire would have much more resistance than most speaker cables. The smaller the wire the greater the benefit of biwire (according to my biwire effect theory). When I could discern to effect of biwire I was talking about AWG12.
By the way, you can be assured that there is absolutely no technical reason to suppose that your "tweeter first" jumper configuration is bad, so enjoy it. |
On my speakers, biwiring sounded extremely different tonally than jumpering low to high. Others noticed this too. However, it sounded very similar tonally to jumpering high to low, with the single wire sounding more focused, and the biwire seeming to flow a bit more freely in the bass. The difference between this latter two was small enough that I decided to stick with single wire jumpering high to low.
My results testing with my old Spendor FL9's were very different though and I preferred biwire at that time (AP Oval 9's).
On the Audience site there is a pointer to a discussion that suggests that the sonic "benefits" due to biwiring are really a form of phase incoherence (I think I got that right) rather than an actual improvement in accuracy; even that it might sound more exciting it's allegedly less accurate.
So what do we do, select the one we like that sounds better or the more theoretically correct one?
As for technical explanations, I'm the wrong person. I do work hard to make my own observations before comparing notes with others, so as to avoid being influenced.
And I am very happy with AU24, single wire, jumpered high to low.
Art |
Artmaltman...Sorry but I can't reverse jumpers because my speakers are biwired. Yes, biwired, something that I never thought worthwhile. But in that case I had actually come up with a theoretical reason why it might make a difference (return wire impedance) and besides, the extra copper can't hurt.
Can you offer any technical explanation for your jumper observations?
By the way, I still don't think that biwire has any audible effect, in spite of the theoretical effect that I identified. |
Hey Eldartford, no argument over my being nuts, but you really ought to experiment with jumpering high to low vs low to high. No question that it sounds very different, at least on the speakers I've tried. (It's how much we care about the difference that makes us all nuts!) |
Yes Drubin, they do sound different. In theory, taking the grounds of both drivers back to the amp ought to be superior. But for some reason (the desire to sell more cable perhaps) there is a craze that appears to have begun in the USA to use two runs of speaker cable rather than use an internally bi-wirable cable. This makes for an entirely different "effective" cable than was originally designed. Whether or not it improves things is hit and miss - most probably a miss. |
Redkiwi, that experiment you suggest is interesting. The other experiment, a little less pure, is comparing bi-wiring to single-wiring. There we may also hear a difference, but in this instance, which way is causing the "damage"? |
Artmaltman...I went and figured. You're nuts!
No offense...in one way or another, we all are :) |
OK, one more thing. I'm getting better results jumpering my Silverline Sonatina II's from high to low, rather than from low to high. This is the opposite of the results I got when jumpering my Spendor FL9's. Go figure. |
Fine by me, but just one point, I had the local importer do the mod and he stands behind the warranty. It just makes sense. |
I do agree with the method and your theory stated. It's not a matter of how cheap and easy the modification can be done. Trust me, it will end up costing more then you think. The speakers will loose value because you pop the posts open without letting the manufacturer do the job. Good for all of you who has the technique doing the mod and again, no doubt the above suggest method is the ultimate to go (ultimate way to go is to take off the spades on your speaker cable and solder them DIRECTLY onto the crossover... C'on , there is always a better way...) but as most of the audiophiles who are not handy (about 85% of them) Getting a set of quality jumpers are the way to go and it certainly for 100% will provide a certain degree of improvement. This post is for discussing upgrading from stock jumpers to the user's newly bought Audience jumper, not anything beyond that. We are a little bit off the topic here. Why don't we start a new thread to discuss the con / pro of the above mod? Shall we? |
Unfortunately they are far from the best Infinity. I agree that internally joining the connections is vastly better, and argue that there is no reason why this cannot be done by a professional technician at lower cost than jumpers. For those of you using jumpers, try this for me... - try connecting your speaker cables to the woofers and listen, then connect them to the tweeters and reverse the direction of your jumpers and listen. If they sound the same to you, then relax. If they sound different, you are hearing an indication of the damage extra connections are causing. Unfortunately the damage is significant to my ears, regardless of how good the jumpers are, and I suspect that you really have to avoid the extra connections to get the best out of single-wiring a bi-wire speaker. |
That is the best way to bridge... for jumping INSIDE the crossover; BUT a lot of users doesn't want the mess around with the stuffs they don't know and since audio gears get upgraded all the times, I guess they don't want to ruin the resell value or maybe they don't want to void the warranty. Soldering technique is also very important when you are doing signal paths... No offense for what you said. Your method DO provide the best quality sound but this sometimes just don't pay off. For some other audiophile fellows out there it's just too much to consider... A set of quality jumpers shouldn't be too far from the best. |
Although it seems not to be a very popular idea, I continue to think that, if you don't mind popping the terminal cover on your speakers, it is far better to wire the top and bottom directly to the same pair of terminals, as opposed to using a jumper. I think that if you are deciding to go single wire with a set of speakers that are set up for biwiring, you should at least give it a try. |
Has anyone ever tried the WBT (0725Cu INSULATED POWER BRIDGE) JUMPER? They sell for $16 each x 4 = $64 at PartsExpress. |
Most of the stock jumpers are gold plated.
You never know what's under the plating...
Brass? Stainless Steel? Steel alloy?
80% of the chance that the stock jumpers are not good conductors like copper & silver...
In this case, upgrading jumpers will improve the sound. |
The stock jumpers on my Silverline Sonatina II's looked superb. To look at them you would have tremendous confidence in their sound. Alas, the switch to Audience AU24 jumpers hosed that theory.... |
What about gold plated jumpers? My stock jumpers sure don't look cheap. |
Stehno: They are 915.1 and solid silver jumpers |
Twist my arm! Ok, Cary SLI-80 in triode mode with Svetlana EL'34's, Silverline Sonatina II, Cary 303/100 cdp, Basis 2001 / Rega RB300 modified / Van Den Hull Frog, EAR 834p chrome modified, assorted isolation devices, and a mix of Cardas Golden Ref, Quattrofil and AU24 interconnects. Oh year, REL Strata III.
I used to have $30k plus used system with CJ monoblocks etc, in recent years I've been playing this game to see how much can I shrink my system and still get extremely high quality sound. I think I'm pretty close to limit. Might try an SET integrated going forward, but I'm basicly real happy with this setup.
--a |
Infinity_audio, does it never end? I have a friend that has been suggesting to do exactly that. But I've resisted since I hate to torque the binding posts unnecessarily on my 6 year old speakers.
I currently have the leads going to the mid/highs and then jumping to the bass.
Would you mind sharing what amp and speakers you have? Maybe the rest of your system as well?
Thanks,
-IMO |
why dont you tie the wiring inside speaker's crossover and save. |
Good! Now you can play around by jumping either from bass to hi, or from hi to bass. I say from bass to hi is good because the Au24 will do a little bit anti-harsh / anti-edges... smotthing things out a little bit! Have fun! |
Any jumper will be the stock. Brass plate doesn't conduct as well. You'll definitely get much better transparency and dyamic sound using any jumper cable. I personally prefer pure silver material. |
Isn't anyone going to make a Martha Stewart joke?????
Brad Day
Atlanta, GA |
My Cardas jumpers really sweeted things up too. Maybe not the prettiest, but they are built well and they sure work great. |
The ONIX Grand Master jumpers that I've seen recently are well-built and sound great. |
I have similar experiences with my Au24's and jumpers. The only problem with mine were that the Au24 jumpers with banana terminations were not as solid a connection as I would prefer.
So I re-installed the stock jumpers along with the Au24 jumpers and noticed a substantial improvement still.
Recently I removed the stock jumpers and am now using some better terminated bananas for what so far appears to be better sonics still.
Spreading the little cleaning juice that comes with the cables on all connections also helps quite a bit.
I thoroughly enjoy the Au24 cables.
-IMO |
