Tannoy Speakers & Bi-wiring

I have Canterbury SE, and bi-wire with Audioquest Mont Blanc low and KE-4 high. I really want to think cables are BS, but there is a modest improvement in resolution, clarity, and extension by running this bi-wire config vs. either cable alone (the jumpers used are either nice Acrolink or VdH; not junk). It's not a huge improvement, but I always end up going back to it, otherwise I'd happily sell either cable for their used market value.

That said, the retail value of comparable current cables is ludicrous. For anything near their the current retail prices, that money would be WAY better off invested anywhere else (e.g. phono stage, amp, vintage tubes, etc). For the prices I paid for these used cables a few years ago, they're a reasonable addition to my system.

Pani, that page does little to convince me of such a fundamental rule. There can be no impact on time alignment, even with cables of slightly differing lengths -- electronic signals are orders of magnitude faster than sound waves. My Tannoys are not actually time aligned, anyways.

Barring electrical mismatch, I'm skeptical there can be much impact on coherence -- if there was, then I'd have gone back to a single run. It's quite coherent sounding, as to be expected of a Tannoy. Next, look at the crossover adjustments on these Tannoys: you can modify 1.1kHz tweeter shelving, which I've had sound excellent in either 0.0 or +1.5dB positions. That's MUCH larger than the differences between any 2 reasonable cables. Yet the tweeter and woofer can still blend seamlessly in either configuration, as long as it's the right choice for the overall system balance. And then the tweeter/woofer drivers themselves couldn't possibly be more different (2" metal dome compression driver; 15" paper woofer), and yet they too blend beautifully. Again, these differences are far greater than those between cables, yet they don't preclude excellent coherence.

Hi Pani,
The Tannoy dual-concentric really is not time aligned. The compression driver diaphragm is about 6 inches behind the woofer's acoustic center. However, Tannoys are phase coherent at the crossover point, thanks to the following slick hack: that 6 inches is equivalent to 180 degrees of phase at the crossover point frequency of 1.1kHz -- hence the tweeter's wiring polarity is simply reversed to yield phase coherence at that point.

A while back Tannoy gave in to market demands and introduced a compensation network to electrically time align the dual-concentric driver. However, apparently the cure was far worse than the disease...it was very short lived and never surfaced again.

I also read somewhere (I forget where; not much value without a citation, unfortunately) there was a study that concluded there was audible improvement for a speaker to be either time aligned or phase coherent, but that having both of them together didn't seem to further the improvement.

Anyways, looking at 6inches divided by 340 meters/sec (the speed of sound) is going to vastly exceed the time mis-alignment effect of any cable discrepancies divided by 200 million meters/sec (about two thirds the speed of light, i.e. signal propagation in cables)...by several orders of magnitude.

That said, I wouldn't turn down a chance to try identical cable top & bottom, but I'm not going to make any purchases to do so. The mixed run sounds better than single run of either, and that's good enough for me.

I've been bi-wiring my Canterbury for years (first SE, now GR), and yes I feel it's an improvement. Every time I drop the 2nd cable run and plug in those Acrolink jumpers I lose a bit , dynamics, and basic "jump factor". However I'll note that I've only tried biwiring with two separate cable runs versus a single run. I've not compared the same exact single cables, with one terminated for biwire versus another terminated single wire with jumpers - which would be like you having JPS reterminate your existing cables. 

Tannoy recommends biwiring in their manuals, but then their toe-in suggestion is kinda wack so take that with a grain of salt. 

Enjoy your awesome new GR speakers!