Need help from Vandersteen owners....


I have pair of Treos on the way to my listening room. This is my first pair of Vandersteens and I want get the most out these new speakers. This is also the first speaker I've ever biwired. I've doing my home work but I am lost on several questions regarding biwiring them. Several reports suggested that I should not buy an integral biwire and that only totally seperate wire runs of the exact cables should be used, is this true? I already have a pair of Audience AU24e cables and I could simply buy another pair, but this is a bit costly and I have no Idea if AU24e mates well with Vandersteens. Anyone with experince with AU24e and Vandersteens? I've also heard that the new Cardas Clear light at $1800 for a 3m run biwire is pretty good but that is an integral run not seperate runs. I know I need to listen to a couple different cables but I'm looking for some feed back on what may have worked well for other Vandersteen 3a sig and Quatro owners just for a launching pad to start my evaluations. Any help would be appreicated.
5560
I have been using Vandersteen speakers for a while and I can confirm that it is best to bi wire them with 2 separate runs of cables. With other speakers it can be a tweek (at best) but on Vand it is very easy to hear. Just to put things into perspective for you, I can tell you about my first experience biwiring Vand speakers. I have a pair of TARA the 2 single run on a pair of wilson's in another room. They sounded pretty good but I wanted to biwire so I tried a run of Audioquest Mont Blanc internal biwire. The AQ were less than half the price of the Tara but sounded much better. I called AQ to ask them a question regarding their spade connectors and they suggested that I buy 2 separate runs of CV-8. That saves me even more money and they swore it would be better than the more expensive AQ I originally asked for. I had no reason not believe them since they were making the sale either way. As luck would have it, they made a mistake and sent me 2 runs of type 6; (retail price $200 for each run) which is their best bulk cable. $200 only because it was professionally terminated. Huge improvement over all the other cables I tried. Had I not already paid for the CV-8, I would have just kept them. Once they fixed the mistake and sent me the CV-8, there was another improvement (not quite as big but still noticeable.) Had I not tried this myself, I would never believed that it would make such a big difference. Hope this info helps you out in your decision.
(( Do you know if integral bi wires sound inferior to completely separate biwire runs?))
Yes Int Bi wires are made from companies that want to keep things neat as a prority.
There is no other advantage.
True Biwiring is best....
A Double pair of same ga runs best.
Try to keep them at least 4 inches apart and off the floor for best results Stans wires above shoud work quite well .... Kimber 12 TC double runs is what we are running on Treos
Cheers JohnnyR
John knows what he is talking about....I use Anti-Cables with MY Vandy 5A's with wonderful results. Because of a move to Arizona, I have an extra pair of speaker cables if you want to try them. Let me know. They are seperate cables plus, minus, 5 ft pair.
JohnnyR, This is a different approach to jumping BiWire speaker connecters. I have to assume that this sounds better than simply paralleling the + &-. I will give this try

On my other question; do you know if integral bi wires sound inferior to completely separate biwire runs? Many integral biwires have separate tweeter and woofer wires which are of different materials or construction. Richard Vandersteen is pretty clear that all wire runs should be exactly the same. Any thoughts?
Thanks for your help.

Thanks for the help.
Great choice in speakers....
((Several reports suggested that I should not buy an integral bi-wire and that only totally separate wire runs of the exact cables should be used, is this true?))

Here is a simple non bi wire trick you can do to test the Wires character with your Treos amd then have a confident opinion of what you like or dislike.
Take the normal speaker wires red positive and hook it to the Treo's Tweeter plus terminal.
Take the Black wire and hook it to the Treo's Woofer negative terminal now just run a small single jumper from the woofers negative to tweeters negative.
Take another single jumper and jump the Tweeter positive to Woofers positive. If you cant sourch the exact jumpers from the wire you are testing a small solid core jumper will work.
This will allow you to expierience the wires DNA or character with your speakers. A good nuetral wire will allow you to enjoy the music and will only sound better when you do Bi-Wire.
Having the same companies interconnect in the system makes sense and will help shorten the confusion as most well engineeried cables work as a system.
What each company feels is nuetral or what their intended bias is with your equipment is your call in your system.
Best JohnnyR