Should I Bi-Wire or Use Jumpers?




I recently upgraded my 7 year old Kimber 4pr to Speltz Anti-Cable and this made a huuuge improvement... but I want to take it to the next level.

I'm currently using a pair of PSB Stratus Mini's, which can be bi wired but only have one single run of anti-cable along with the stock jumpers in place. My Denon PMA 2000ivr also has a and b speaker outputs for bi wiring.

My question is - will it make any difference if I use a double run on Anti-Cable to bi wire vs. a single run with the addition of anti cable jumpers? The price difference between the two is only about $50.00 so this isnt a concern but jumpers would be slightly easier to manage.

Oh yeah, If my current speaker wire has spades, can I also use jumpers with spades? For example having two sets of spade connections in ony binding post ( speaker wire and jumpers) or will this degrade the sound? Maybe a better option would be banana plugs for the jumpers.
dave123456

Showing 1 response by dogmcd

Whether or not bi-wiring is a benefit or not remains an open debate and I know some speaker manufacturers don't do it because they feel it's a detriment (ala Dynaudio). I've run both bi-wire systems and standard runs, and I'm not sure that I can reliably say that it's always a benefit.

However, the one thing that is important with bi-wiring is that you actually use TWO sets of cables per speaker. If you use a cable that's set up for "internal" bi-wiring, all you're doing is splitting a single run in two somewhere along the way to accomodate a speaker's bi-wire connection. To gain any benefit, you really need two separate runs.