Single wiring bi-wireable speakers


Dumb question, but which binding posts should I use for connecting the speaker cables? Top or bottom? I've always bi-wired, so I've never thought about it. Anyway, I've put the gold grounding straps back in place.

(I've promised a fellow Gonner that I would A/B my Talon Khorus against Newform Research R645's. I want to use the same cables and since the Talons cannot be bi-wired, I'm running the tests with single runs of Kimber 8TC.)

This should be a one reply thread (unless someone starts throwing tomatoes at my innocence).
128x128wmcmanus
This is a good one. Some would say to wire to the woofer posts as this is where the most current / signal is flowing. Others might say that you should wire to the mid / high section, as the sound there is more delicate. Putting "junky" jumpers in the signal path would be more noticeable than if you fed the highs and let the jumpers feed the current to the woofers. My take on this is that a lot of it would depend on your crossover frequencies.

Either way, if you are using the factory installed "plated scrap metal" jumpers that come with most speakers, you should remove them and simply insert some solid core copper wire of the appropriate gauge between the high and low section. I would probably opt for the heaviest gauge that you could fit into your binding posts and wire the speaker cables to the high / mid section. That short of a distance of solid copper should not affect the delivery of voltage / current to a woofer in the least. The higher your crossover from the low to high section is though, the more this could come into play.

Obviously, this one is open to interpretation and it is possible that some trial and error could prove me right or wrong. Sean
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The biggest difference I think you'll hear is if you replace the bar jumper with jumpers made out of the Kimber, either 4TC or 8TC. There are differing opinions (not in audio you say?) about taking the cable to the upper(mid-tweets) or lower posts first, but I usually try to give the mid-tweets the best chance at producing the best sound. However, try it both ways to determine for yourself. Also, be sure to position the cable spades closest to the speaker, with the jumper spades closest to the post nut. It's a thought. Good luck.
I have always run it to the top for the raeasons Sean mentions. My speakers came with wire jumpers, I assume copper wire, the bass did not sound good with these jumpers, I replaced them with JPS SC2 jumpers and it greatly improved.
I run my N802's single wired, sounds more coherent and a better soundstage than bi-wired. I've tried using both sets of terminals and various jumper wires and settled on the bottom (woofer) terminals as the main input and use the B&W supplied jumper wires to the mids/tweets. You can do a lot of fine tuning with jumpers. I have five different sets.
I tried the Newforms last night with the stock gold plated jumpers and the Kimber 8TC connected to the top binding posts. These were not the same speakers I remembered when they were in my reference system several months ago with bi-wired Tice 416A cables. Very muddy bottom end last night!

It makes me wish I hadn't cannobolized the bi-wired pair of 8TC that I had to make 2 single run pair. The comparison that I'm now trying to make against the Talon Khorus dossn't seem at all fair. It's either an apples to oranges cable comparison (Tice on the Newforms and Kimber on the Talons), or a "direct" cable comparison knowing full well that the low end of the Newforms is suffering from a sub-optimal set-up (i.e., same cables, but is it really the same if one set of speakers were designed to be bi-wired and the other pair was not?)

I guess I'll just have to do my best! Thanks for all the help.
I highly suggest popping off the binding post plate and rewiring the posts such that all speaker wires are attached to one set of binding posts, thus eliminating any need for gold plated scrap metal or overpriced and sound degrading jumpers. I ran a set of Energy speakers biwired, single wired and then tried rewired internally as mentioned above to where I could just run one set of binding posts/cables, the sound was better then with the strap and no worse then biwired, but was cheaper and more aesthetically pleasing....