Free Tip for Jumpers

Where the line is separating high SQ standards from obsessiveness is an interesting (and personal) question.

Nelson Pass used Mills resistors in his First Watt B4 crossover I own, because the cost of doing so (not cheap) was justified by the SQ that resistor affords. He made the B4 fully-discrete (no opamps or integrated circuits) for the same reason.

@bdp24 - I get that many/most manufacturers do not use boutique wire and crossover parts, but some use better parts (mostly caps) where they believe it will make a sonic difference.  Standard OFC hook up wire is still 101% conductivity on the IACS scale, and certainly not “junk.” Therefore, perhaps the designer, who has presumably listened critically to their product, determined nothing more or different was needed.  Same with jumper plates, which, assuming they are gold-plated copper, would probably not affect the sound any more than the binding post themselves.  The results of listening tests on cross-connected binding post jumpers would be interesting to me.  The longer I do this, the more I question obsession vs. progression in this hobby.

@knownothing +2

Most loudspeakers contain not only junk hookup wire, but junk crossover parts. Take a look inside any given speaker and see what you find.

Danny Richie is not just some guy on the internet. He is a professional designer with many loudspeakers to his credit. He offers upgrade packages that not only replace the junk parts commonly found in loudspeakers built to a price point (almost all are) with high quality capacitors, resistors, coils, and-yes-wire, but also "fixes" the flaws he finds in the design of most speakers sent to him. That includes frequency response aberrations (often the result of sub-optimum crossover design), stored energy resonances (revealed in spectral decay---i.e. waterfall---plots) in both drivers and enclosures, any many other flaws (watch a GR Research video or two---see below).

He also sells loudspeaker kits for DIYers, which contain those same parts (as well as drivers built to his specs). And then there is the GR Research/Rythmik Audio subwoofers, designed in a collaboration between Danny and Brian Ding of Rythmik. A sealed 12" model, and a remarkable OB/Dipole sub, THE sub for use with dipole loudspeakers (whether employing electrostatic, planar-magnetic, ribbon, or dynamic drivers).

So, am I to understand that a speaker designer/manufacturer who makes their living from actually specifying the drivers used, and designing the cabinets, driver layout, bracing, crossovers, frequency range for each driver, and how to make it all work together and sound good, actually knows less about what hook up wire to use than a bunch of folks on the internet?   Amazing.  

In one of his most recent YouTube videos (well worth your time), Danny Richie of GR Research recounted his experience of years ago auditioning loudspeakers in a dealer’s showroom, in a system that including a pair of $5,000 speaker cables. He was amused that a system using loudspeaker cables of that price was powering a pair of loudspeaker’s with the cheapest internal wire available, i.e. garbage-quality. Do all the bi-wiring or jumping you want, the loudspeaker’s internal wiring will remain a bottleneck in the system. One of the most-overlooked links in the hi-fi system chain.

I’ve been doing this for years myself and recently did some trials on jumper cables that were quite eye opening! I'd show a pic but I still can't seem to post pics on here.

Looks to me as if @knownothing  knows something. Thank you for sharing @donquichotte, thank you. Great to hear folks systematically experimenting and sharing their results!

I have biwire (4 x 13 AWG) OCC copper speaker cables and a pair of Spendor SP2/3R2 biwirable speakers. I have tried all the possible permutations (except for high quality, pricey jumpers) and my preferred method of connecting the speakers is as follows:

- at the red speaker terminals: tie together two 13 AWG cables and connect them to the midbass terminal, then use a stock gold plated metal jumper plate to connect the midbass and tweeter terminale

- at the black speaker terminals: ditch the stock plate and do a normal biwire (one 13 AWG cable to midbass and one to tweeter

I haven’t tried the above solution but with the colors reversed, maybe biwiring the red terminals instead would have resulted in a somewhat different sound?!

My experience with three different models of Wharfedale monitors is that:

1) replacing the metal bars from the factory with jumpers improves the overall sound of the speakers 

2) the metal in the jumper cables matters with silver tipping the sound up towards treble emphasis compared with copper

3) connecting both red and black speaker cable leads on the HF terminals has a similar overall effect as connecting silver jumpers, emphasizing treble frequencies, while connecting both speaker cable ends to the LF terminals will emphasize bass and midrange and slightly roll off treble

4) cross wiring the + and - leads to the HF and LF terminals affects soundstaging, adding more detail to and widening the stereo image, with the positive lead attached to the HF terminal of the speaker slightly emphasizing treble, (opposite of what is described above?) but not to the same degree as attaching both cable ends to the HF posts.

I found these results on all three types of Wharfedale speakers of different vintages and costs.  Newer Wharfedales come with instructions on these various wiring configurations when using single wire cables.  

I have tried all kinds of homemade jumpers and some cheaper commercially available versions.  I am currently using some jumpers from AliExpress that are supposedly silver plated OCC copper with rhodium plated copper spades that cost between $11 and $45.  These seem super well made and sound fantastic to my ears.  The Worlds Best Cable jumpers mentioned in this thread from Amazon are supposed to be Canare wire, look well-made and are probably leaps ahead of the metal plates that come stock with many speakers.

YMMV

kn

Thanks for the input.  I'll try what you suggest. East swap.

@sandrodg73 

Thanks for recounting your experiment. A couple thoughts. You did two things at once. It would be interesting to leave the original factory jumpers and only wire diagonally. See what that does.

It sounds like the aftermarket jumpers were not broken in. Unbroken in wires tend to be trebly and harsh… which, typically is also a common attribute of inexpensive audio wires. But hard to tell what is going on here.

I have some leftover #6 bare copper from a lighting ground project on a TV antenna to jump my old AE 1's. Works like a charm on the old metal drivers. 

I just tried the diagonal bi wire method tonight.  Took out my factory jumpers, installed some 8 gage jumpers and did the diagonal connection off of the amp.  I was a skeptic but figured that replacing the factory jumpers couldn't hurt.  I bought cheap jumpers off of Amazon from Worlds Best Cables. Quality looks good.  I wasn't going to spend hundreds on inches of wire. As an electrician I was very skeptical because as stated previously,  electricaly top post is same as bottom with jumpers installed. 

But damn.....a difference it did make. I wasn't happy with it, but it did make an obvious difference. It made my speakers brighter which im not a fan of. Probably because moving the - to the top post and getting rid of the crap factory jumpers allows more current to flow to the tweeters. I didn't care for it. I left jumpers in and moved speaker cable back down.  Took the brightness out and sound became smooth again. Moral of the story is that I'm now a believer in replacing factory jumpers, but for my set up and taste the diagonal method wasn't pleasing. Im may try it again and run ARC to see what happens.  Either way I'm running room correction again because it definitely changed things.  

I found most speakers that can be bi-wired have a steel plate covered with chrome or maybe gold to jump the highs and lows.  Copper wire has to be better that steel, so I’ve been using jumpers forever.

@bill_k You’re correct — I misread the original post and thanks for the correction.  My bad and apologies to @daveyf for my mistake.  I still do highly recommend trying jumpers along with bi-wiring if you swing that way. 

The Nordost website says to avoid internal bi-wire cables, and not to use a cheaper double run...they say use the best single cable you can afford and equivalent jumpers...until you can afford a double run of their good cables !!!

@soix - With all due respect, what the OP suggests is diagonal connection of a standard speaker cable to a bi-wirable speaker with jumpers. That is what Nordost recommends for connection to bi-wirable speakers, their current speaker cables are not even available in a true bi-wired configuration.

@daveyf This involves using jumpers while simultaneously using true bi-wired cables.  Not sure if that was clear.

IME, IF a speaker is designed to be bi-wired, it invariably sounds better without jumpers. A true bi-wire cable works best. While I tend to agree that a single cable split at the speaker end to a bi-wire connection is probably not the best solution, two separate cables is. ( although I prefer a bi-wired single cable vs. stock metal jumpers that are usually supplied by the manufacturer of the speaker).

I thought about jumpers in a certain way like sky diving or from cliff to rough sea

Why not move the inside speaker leads inside the speaker and combine lower with the upper and eliminate the jumpers all together? That’s what I did on my last speakers. 

You guys do realize that despite all your manipulations all these connections are going to exactly the same point electrically.  The claims for "astounding" improvements are just simply hogwash, and represent the wants of the user, not the realities.

This thread sent me on a trip to the way-back machine where I remembered this very subject being discussed over on AA.

This 22-year old thread recommends the positive wire to the MF/HF terminal and the negative to the LF terminal, and also provides some (humorous) explanations as to why cross-connecting sounds better.

In this other 22-year old thread, it is explained that Eichmann also recommended connecting the positive lead to the MF/HF terminal. That thread is part of this larger thread, which shows how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

If you look at the whole thread, the back and forth covers the listeners vs. engineers and marketing vs. reality arguments that still occur here every day. You might also notice the occasional appearance of industry professionals, like John Curl who enters the thread and discusses the use of transformers in amplifiers. Fun times.

Iam using their $150 jumpers. Audioquest has good one too and ZenSati.

The Nordost diagonal works

Thanks, I will definitely give that a try. 

Would this also apply to three way speakers where the mid bass and tweeter on the same post ?

So if I don't bi-wire, can I insert the red banana up to the tweeter and the black banana up to the base midrange without damaging my speakers? My speakers are Linn Nexus with factory copper jumpers.

I  would like to see if the consensus here is that the OP's suggested wiring is the preferred choice rather than the reverse, that being red lead to tweeter and black lead to midrange/bass. I could test this out myself but, access to one speaker is very limited in my secondary system. Seems to me that Vandersteen suggests this idea also.

Right, Lak. Mine are a modest after market buy from World's Best Cables.  But this placement is so good I wanted to share with others. 

Go to partsconnecxion. Buy Neotech awg 14 solid core Occ Teflon wire buy 3 strip the ends  and bend the ends and connect  the highest purity for under$30  highest purity wire and great sound , you don’t need connectors bend the endsforspadeor banana .sounds excellent .

The effect is astounding, with greater focus, detail and less haze and grain.

Yup, I’ve been doing this for years in my bi-wire configuration due to the urging of Chris Sommovigo from Black Cat, Stereovox, Stereolab, etc. and have experienced these same results along with notably tighter bass — I was shocked. While I might not go as far as calling the improvement “astounding,” it’s plenty significant enough that I’d never listen without the jumpers. I’m of the opinion that cost-effective jumpers from the likes of DH Labs, etc. are perfectly fine for this application, so I view this as a very worthwhile and cost-effective tweak.

BTW, it works with aii speaker jumper cables including whatever comes with your speakers, without an upgrade, but the upgraded speaker jumpers might sound better.