2. speakers
  3. 1442416679

Speaker jumpers and hook up choices Question

For many years now speakers come with 4 terminals for bi amp/bi wiring. research has shown few people do either but it continues. Whe I has in the audio biz it was one set regarless of the speaker and life was good. With 4 terminals it can be an endless choice of jumpers and hook up methods and they all make the speaker sound different. In my case I would use one of three hook ups regardless of jumpers used

1) Cables to the low side . Jumpers feed the high side This make the most sense to me
2) Cable to the high side Jumpers feedn the low side. Not sure why one would do this.
3)Pos cable to the low side and neg to the high side. This one sounds way different then the other two and in most cases better WHAT IS IT DOING?? What is happening when you use this hook up?

Thanks
geph0007

Showing 2 responses by ghosthouse

ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,321 posts
 
FWIW - I had been using the AudioQuest diagonal configuration Geph0007 describes above. After reading through the posts on the related bi-wire survey thread that MoFi started (this includes a link to the Nordost single wire for bi-wireable speaker recommendations as transcribed above, again by Geph) I reversed to the Nordost diagonal configuration. My jumpers are from Paul Laudati of Clear Day and non-directional as best I can tell. At any rate, they stayed as they were. I did think in my system, switching go the Nordost arrangement (positive to low frequency and negative to upper frequency post) resulted in a slightly clearer presentation. Tonally the AudioQuest arrangement seems "warmer" but maybe at the expense of clarity (provided by the Nordost method). Of course, in 6 months when I forget what I did today, I'll switch back to the Audioquest approach and swear things sound better.
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,321 posts
 
Geph - good...maybe I'm not delusional. I just went back to the AQ arrangement. The differences (assuming I'm not imagining things) are pretty subtle and seem most noticeable in the first seconds of listening. It's an easy enough switch to make so I'll probably continue to mess with things. Play one track a few times listening to just a few measures back and forth.

Before I hit submit for the above, went back and forth a few times on an AA Bondy track (#2 from American Hearts) on Spotify. Definitely think tonal balance shifts a bit between the two configurations. I'd say bass is a little fuller with the AQ diagonal arrangement. Again it's subtle and I'm not sure how much is placebo (though I kind of lost track of which arrangement was from which company). Not sure I could pick it out in a double-blind test. But maybe....
More to discover