Jumpers vs bi-wire

My preference has always been, in a bi-wire application, if one connot afford two pair of cables, then the next best thing is a single run and jumpers made of the same speaker cable material. We have and always will provide jumpers at no extra charge for use in this application.

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.

Since Bi-wires originated from a single point. The terminal of your amp. Shouldnt instead of connecting to for example the low freq posts then jumpering to the High but instead connecting in the middle of the jumper be the same as bi-wiring? Picture your amp being the apex of the V with your high and low posts being the ends. now grab the wires at the apex of the "V" slide it towards the speaker Creating a "Y". Essentialy the "Y" is there all along its just that the vertical leg is in the amp hidden from view. Try that experiment ☺

Flickkit, it doesn't quite work that way. The point of bi-wiring is to have the currents that flow through the high-frequency drivers travelling in a different wire than the currents for the low frequency drivers. If it was wired as you suggest it would be no different that single wiring with a jumper. Both high and low frequency currents would flow in the same piece of wire. Jon Risch at audioasylum has some good material on the subject.

But Nighthawk, the signals going to the separate points on the speaker are identical (there is no separating going on at the amplifier end), so bi-wiring is exactly like Flickkit said. Doubling the size of a single wire will give you the same effect as by-wiring, with less fuss.