Jumpers vs bi-wire


Question for the experts: If I run straight cables to my speakers and then use cable jumpers to replace the metal connectors that came with the speakers (mine are set up with a high and low post for the speaker connections), do the cable jumpers need to be the same brand/model as the main cable in order to achieve the same benefits/attributes of the main cable. It seems the answer would be yes, but so few cable makers seem to make jumpers. Am I missing something (would not be the first time). My limited knowledge of such suggests to me that to get the same benefits/attributes to both high and low binding posts, I'd have to bi-wire (or shotgun). Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
vtl

Showing 1 response by gunbei

I'd been using biwired speaker cables of varying brands for a few years.

Last summer I bought a single run pair of Audience AU24. I'd read they recommended the single run plus jumpers approach for the AU24, so I began using that configuration. I'd been using the AU24 jumpers with them as well.

For the last two weeks, I've been comparing a single run of AU24 versus the same of Ridge Street Audio Poiema. I noticed certain qualities one had that the other didn't, so on a whim I decided to try biwiring with the AU24 going to the tweeters of my ProAc Response 2.5s and the Poiema connected to the woofers.

I was expecting this odd set up might introduce some phasing issues, but what resulted was a very nice sound. This is the first time I'd tried biwiring with different brands of speaker cables and got a result close to what I expected.

Last week I even tried connecting double runs of 47 Labs OTA to each of the negative return leads of my speakers with the Poiema, and got very good results as well.

A few years ago I would have never considered odd experiments like these, but hanging around Viggen so long has opened my mind to some unorthodox and often pleasing audio sonic approaches.