Tweeter or Woofer connection with single wire


Not sure if this came up elsewhere in this forum but I was wondering what is the general preference out there when connecting a single speaker wire to a bi-wire speaker: do you connect to the woofer or the tweeter binding posts?

I used to always use the woofer posts but recently experimented with connecting to the tweeter post and so far prefer that connection. Detail and air seem improved, as well as a sense of delicacy and speed (so far on ATC SCM 11s and Proac 2.5). I know companies like Totem encourage experimentation. In an attempt to picture what is going on, I imagined (in comic book fashion) the music signal traveling down this hose and arriving at the binding posts and what happens then:

A tweeter/crossover is a humble thing with a generally high level of protection (resistance/impedance or the like), it only wants a small portion of your signal in terms of total energy, but insists on the detail and delicacy of this signal (and the right frequency range, I know). So by arriving first at the tweeter the signal is happy to give up this small amount of energy before moving on to the woofer who demands more more more. Also this woofer is a hyper sort that causes a fair amount of vibration and back emf and all sorts of nasties. Here the jumper has a chance to dissipate some of that vibration and life is good.

On the other hand if the music signal arrives at the woofer connection first, the woofer gobbles up all it wants with little regard to the needs of the tweeter. One hopes that the tweeter signal moves on to the tweeter with enough of the delicacy and detail still intact despite the vibrations and nasties coming from the woofer through the woofer binding posts.

Just curious how many out there favor one method over the other, thanking you in advance for your input.

Cheers
bokfudo
The only known technical factor that I can envision being relevant is that resistance between amp and woofer(s) should be as small as possible, to optimize damping factor and to reduce cable effects that might result from the relatively large currents that flow at low frequencies. But even that is most likely utterly insignificant with respect to the path through the jumper, assuming the contacts involved are clean and tight.

So my instinct is that it is likely to make no difference whatsoever, although I would connect to the woofer terminals for these reasons. But to phrase Albert's good comment a little differently, "who knows?"

Some minor corrections to some of the previous statements, though:

Electrical signals propagate through wires at, very roughly, 1/2 or 2/3 of the speed of light in a vacuum, the exact speed depending on the dielectric constant of the insulation.

Tweeters draw less current and power than woofer or mid-range elements primarily because there is usually less energy in the music at high frequencies than at low frequencies, not because the impedance of the tweeter and its associated crossover elements are higher than those of the woofer.

The woofer doesn't gobble up energy that should be made available to the tweeter. If the cable is connected to the woofer terminals, whatever instantaneous voltage appears at the woofer terminals will determine the current and power into the combination of tweeter + high frequency crossover + jumper, based exclusively on that voltage and the combined impedance of the tweeter + high frequency crossover + jumper. The jumper impedance most likely being insignificant.

Mechanical vibration has no direct relevance to which terminals are connected to. Back emf produced by cone vibration can be a significant effect at low frequencies, and to the extent that it may make any difference would again suggest connecting to the woofer terminals, to produce the most direct connection between amp and woofer.

Regards,
-- Al
Bokfudo,

All that matters is you can hear the difference and have selected the best option. Many things in audio don't make sense, maybe someday there will be an explanation for things we hear but can't easily explain.
That is a good question Bokfudo. Since electricity and therefore electrical signals move at the speed of light, I doubt the woofer has too much time to gobble up the signal before the signal bridges the appx 1-2" span between the connectors...:0)
Nonetheless, I do connect the woofer outputs of my amp to the woofer inputs on my speakers and the same with the tweets....Guess I'm also a little susceptible!!!