"Bi-wiring" is not a marketing ploy.  But may not be the best way to get the most bang for the buck for some listeners.  All things being equal, if you break out the total gauge of one cable into 2 cables, you'll be adding manufacturing costs in producing 2 cables, complete with another outer jacket, terminations, and additional labor. 

Part of the cost/performance bi-wire "argument" is that the higher frequencies do not require as much gauge as the lower end.  Therefore, put less of the "good stuff" (i.e. better material) on the top end thus extracting the best sonics from those materials, and bulk up (add meat) to the bottom end with less expensive materials to get more gauge.  This optimizes the cable budget using the most cost effective materials where they'll yield the best sonic benefit(s).

Some are not fans of additional jumpers and connections with a single cable/biwire connections, and prefer the straight line from the amplifier to the speaker input terminals that bi-wiring provides.

We can argue this until we figure out how to plug a digital bitstream directly into our brains.  I think it's a cost/performance conversation with no "winners" or "losers" in sonic performance if it's done "right."

 

Not very well. 

If biwiring helps, then your original speaker cables were inadequate. 

The audioquest web page has an excellent tutorial on bi wiring. I use two separate pairs of type 4 to good effect.

@panzrwagn plue one .... 

These 8 gauge jumpers is all that you will need. No reason to spend more!

 

 

Let me make it simple. Biwiring is nonsense. It is exactly as effective as the gauge of the combined cables. Nothing more. Biwiring sends the exact same signal down both sets of cables. Any field effects are equal in both cables. Single wired speakers split there feed to the crossovers at the rear speaker connector. Biwiring does it at the amplifier. All filtering of the input is done at the crossover. If you want to make a genuine difference, pull the passive crossovers out, use line level electronic crossovers and biamp.

Out of curiosity and if it’s not too personal, how extreme did you go with your jumpers?

@immatthewj Another great question. So, the person who recommended I try this was Chris Sommovigo (RIP) from Illuminati, Stereovox, Black Cat, etc. when I was reviewing some of his interconnects and speaker cables. In an offhand comment he mentioned I should try his jumpers with my Acoustic Zen Shotgun Bi-wire cables. I said, uh, what??? He was adamant so he sent some thin banana jumpers (i.e. nothing like my garden hose cables) and I was beyond skeptical, but as soon as I plugged them in the improvement was immediate and undeniable and they haven’t left my system since. I say this because I’m not sure it matters so much which cables you use for jumpers, and at least in my case they didn’t have to match my speaker cables to make a significant improvement — and the price of the jumpers Chris sent were WAY less expensive than if I bought AZ jumpers. I think you can get very good banana jumpers that are reasonably priced from Audioquest from Audio Advisor, Crutchfield, etc. and they may be more than fine and can probably be returned if not. That’s prolly what I’d do. Highly recommended to at least try. Maybe just try these as they’d work with your mix of banana and spade connectors and give you an idea at very low cost…

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_703PSCBIWR/AudioQuest-PSC-BiWire-Jumpers.html

As for the question of the zip ties with your cables, unfortunately I got nuthin’. I’d think it could work depending on how well your cables are shielded, but obviously you could try it both ways. Personally, I’d have bigger fish to fry rather than worry so much about that, especially if your cables are well shielded. But that’s just a non-educated guess.

. . . I just took a look on PCX and Furutech as a set of four for $237. . . .

Thanks, @soix  , yes, that absolutely clears things up.

I guess I am shotgun biwiring.  I do have two separate runs to each speaker (to make it easier on the amplifier end I had one run made with bananas to use on the amp end, but spades for the speaker end).

HOWEVER:  in multiple places I zip-tied the two runs together (they are long runs and doing that makes things more sanitary); so would you think that doing that with the zip-ties defeated the benefits of the shotgun method?

I was shocked (I know I should not have been) by the prices of some of the jumpers when I just a bit ago did a search on MD.  For example:  $1200 for a set of Shunyatas!!  I was leaning more in the direction of the Kimber 4TCs for $124, except they are out of stock right now, so I punt in a "notify me when . . ." request.

Out of curiosity and if it's not too personal, how extreme did you go with your jumpers?

this is probably a stupid question, but what is "shotgun" biwiring?

@immatthewj No, that’s an excellent question. Shotgun bi-wiring refers to having two physically separated cables running for both the high and low signal legs. There are also internally bi-wired cables where both legs run together next to each other in the same sheathing rather than running separate and are just separated at the end where the cables connect to the speakers.

And to clarify--does it matter that the jumpers you used in conjunction with the biwire are bananas? The reason I ask about that is because I still have the (gold plated) jumpers that came with my B&Ws, but they are not bananas, they are contoured strips designed to just fit underneath the speaker terminal nuts, and since they accomplish the same thing, would the bananas actually have a different effect?

While the straps do the same thing, they’re basically crap and even if you don’t bi-wire you’d be well served to replace them with decent shoe jumper cables with banana connectors (bananas so you don’t have to double up on spade connections with spade jumpers). So, replacing the crap straps with real wire cables should yield sonic improvements even if you’re using single wire.  What surprised me was using banana wire jumpers with shotgun bi-wire cables still produced a significant improvement. Hope that clears it up a bit.

 

. . . @soix , I guess this is the answer to my (above) question?

@soix  , this is probably a stupid question, but what is "shotgun" biwiring?

And to clarify--does it matter that the jumpers you used in conjunction with the biwire are bananas?  The reason I ask about that is because I still have the (gold plated) jumpers that came with my B&Ws, but they are not bananas, they are contoured strips designed to just fit underneath the speaker terminal nuts, and since they accomplish the same thing, would the bananas actually have a different effect?  (I can see where the bananas would be easier to experiment with and use.)

I have identical single and shotgun bi-wire versions of the same cable and marginally prefer the shotgun bi-wire so that’s what I use.  I attribute the difference to basically doubling the gauge of the cable that significantly reduces resistance.  In the end I don’t care why, I just know it sounds better.  But, and this is significant, the difference is subtle enough that I’d upgrade all upstream electronics first before I’d consider going to a shotgun bi-wire cable because I think you get potentially bigger improvements there.  But, if you feel like you’ve got all that sorted I think bi-wiring is at least worth trying.  A more significant improvement occurred when I used banana jumpers in addition to my shotgun bi-wire spade cables.  Using both together significantly tightened up the bass and improved imaging and I won’t listen without the jumpers.  Don’t know why it works, but it definitely does and a cheap tweak so well worth trying IME.

Actually the, filter if well designed like for example a Vandersteen ( passing Electrical Engineering since 1977 ) will back the crossover point ALL the  way to the amplifier. Like i said, the basic physics are well understood…. 

 

It doesn’t work any different than non bi-wired. From an electrical engineering standpoint, the amplifier terminal and the two speaker terminals are the exact same node. The only advantage IMO of bi-wiring is that the sonic signature of a speaker can be customized by inserting resistors between the the high and low terminals. This adds additional nodes between the amp and the crossovers and changes the filter parameters (that is, it's designed that way -- you shouldn't do that yourself).

+1, @knotscott  , that is kind of the way I look at it.

It was cheap and easy for me to try. and thought it might offer some benefit, so I did it. Never compared single wire since. At worst, I doubled the wire gauge and added minor wire cost....at best, it sounds wonderful so I leave it as-is and enjoy the hell out of it. 😎

(1) I’ve not experienced any bi-wiring performance improvements in my systems, and I’m in the “best-you-can-get single wire + jumpers” camp.

NOTE: bi-amping is a different story.

 

(2) However, others express different positive results in their systems. So here is the “diagonal bi-wiring” option to test out for yourself.

“ … Diagonal bi-wiring connects the red speaker cable to the bass/mid post and the black cable to the treble post. Then jumpers connect bass to treble in the usual fashion. I tested this arrangement out of curiosity and the results were pleasantly surprising…”

https://www.nordost.com/downloads/multiLanguage/NorseJumperinstructions_new.pdf

Each to his own …. Carry on.

@jmeyers  , your question interests me as well.  I have an ancient (30 year old) pair of B&W 805 (the Matrix seies) that are set up for bi-wiring, so back in the days when I was making a lot of money, I did bi-wire them.  I have a real tough time with A/Bs, plus I am lazy and would rather listen than test and experiment, so I have never tried comparing how I feel about bi-wire versus single wire with supplied jumpers.

With all that typed, if you were to plug in "bi-wiring" or "biwiring" as a serch engine up in the "search discussions" box at the top of the page, a bunch of hits will come up.  I know, because I did that about 40 minutes ago.  Some answers were that bi-wiring makes no difference and some people gave technical explanations of why bi-wiring is a good thing on speakers that are set up to be bi-wired.  Unfortunately (for me), I do not have a great mind for undertsanding that type of technical theory, so it mostly left me blank.

But maybe try your own A/B comparison and/or do the search of the site I described, and see if any of the explanations make more sense to you than they did for me.

wrong….. but

 to extract the full impact of a true biwire your speakers need be properly configured with a separate set of mid / high binding posts AND you must use what is called an external biwire speaker cable AND if at all possible physically separate he bass cable from the mid / high cable ( this is why an internally biwire cable is 90 ineffective. The physics are well understood…. pass current thru a wire and create a expanding and collapsing magnetic field . This field in turn modulates the mid / high signal. 4” matters. lots of good engineers with ears can hear it. I have a nice set of shotgun external biwire cables that i loan out for this express purpose…they have about 50 K fedex miles on them…. your milage…. may vary….

Thank you for the video; I watched all 27 minutes. It confirmed -- in spades -- what I had surmised (but only after I paid $600 more for their being "bi-wired").

Talk about being suckered! Jeez!!

Bi-Wiring, Part 1: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒅