How to connect bi-wire speakers

Edmond,
The best sound will be achieved by attaching the speaker cables to the tweeter binding posts and connecting the bass posts via the jumper. If you, instead, connect the speaker cables to the bass binding posts, your sound will be noticeably degraded. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. By the way, Silversmith Audio also makes jumpers.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio

Greetings Edmond,
Obviously the connection you described will function, but it will be inferior sonically to connecting both cables to the tweeter terminals. It may have simply been easier to connect the cables the other way because of the way the cables were situated, close spacing of the binding posts, or to have the least tension on the ribbons.

Rlwainwright, please feel free to call me if you would like an explanation about sonic difference between attaching the cables to the tweeter or bass posts.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio

Briefly, binding posts are one of the worst offenders in terms of audio degradation (thick metal and its affect on the electromagnetic wave as a waveguide). When connecting a bi-wireable speaker with single wire cables, signal must pass through two sets of binding posts and, typically, an equally poor jumper, before it reaches the drivers. If the single cable is connected to the bass posts, one can expect diminished focus, soundstage, and a glare in the treble region with poor high freq extension. On the positive side, the bass will be tighter (less boom) with better perceived bass extension (deeper bass). If the single cable is connected to the tweeter/mid posts, one can expect a more natural top end, better imaging and soundstage, but more boomy (out of control) bass. Many actually enjoy the bass boom and prefer this configuration. The magnitude of these differences will depend on the crossover point and the quality of the cables. This is an easy experiment for anyone to do in their own system to hear the effect for themselves.
Again, feel free to call for a more detailed explanation.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio

Hi Edmond,
They only way to avoid passing the signal through two sets of binding posts is obviously to use a second set of high quality cables to bi-wire. In the case of Silversmith Audio cables, there is nothing wrong with using Silver cables for the bass and Palladium cables for the mid/tweeter. The best sound of course will be achieved by truly bi-wiring with Palladium.
Upgrading your jumper to Palladium will also improve your sound quality, though not to the level of bi-wiring.
Lastly, consider upgrading your binding posts, if possible. Low mass binding posts are finally hitting the market and I recommend the Eichmann product. This can be a substantial sonic improvement to both the single and bi-wire configurations.

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio

As an engineer, I will simply state that the concepts and equations behind my statements can be found in any text on electromagnetic theory, and, surprisingly, are pretty simple.
The Director for the Center for Audio Research and Engineering, and Director for Postgraduate Studies within the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at Essex University in the UK, has written articles which very neatly explain how a binding post can dramatically affect sound quality. While these papers are more specifically about cables, the same concepts apply to the binding posts as they are just a continuation of the conductor chain. Many of his papers can be found here:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/audio_lab/malcolms_publications.html#PhD%20Thesis

Hopefully some of those articles can answer your questions. Happy Reading!

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio

When those engineers and professors discuss waveguides and their implications in audio cables, they usually just show characteristic impedance, LCR filter effect losses, impedance losses, etc. They rarely mention phase effects, group delay, etc, and I've never seen any mention of the interaction between the electromagnetic wave traveling at a few meters per second in the conductor material, and the electromagnetic wave traveling at nearly the speed of light in the dielectric.
This article is a "readers digest" version which discusses much of this and has been printed in Stereophile and HiFiNRR in the UK:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/audio_lab/malcolmspubdocs/G3%20HFN%20Essex_Echo_(cables_1985).pdf

Here is a much more in-depth and technical paper (long - 12mb):
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ese/research/audio_lab/malcolmspubdocs/G6-9%20Unification%20(4%20parts).pdf

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Smith
Silversmith Audio