Vandersteen 5A biwire shotgun absolutely required?


I know this is recommended but is it absolutely necessary to get the best sound from the 5A's? I'm currently using the Synergistic Research Accel. biwire(internal) cables with the builtin jumpers - they work great but I wonder :)

Thanks in advance for any opinions
Tony
128x128mantis007
I doubt you really need to bi-wire to get best tho I have talked with Richard several times and he advises Bi-wire so I would trust the man who made them. What confuses me most about Bi-wire with my fathers Wood Quatro and the 5A is the fact the woofer is powered which IMO makes Bi-wire less of an issue then with most speakers.
My father runs Audioquest Mont Blac speaker cables on his Vandersteen Quatro's which are Bi-wire but not shotgun and the sound is stunning.
Davemitchell: I have #2.

I think I'll just stay with what I have and save some money. Experimenting always costs me $$ and usually the result isn't worth it ;)

Thanks
Tony
I would guess that if you are going to spend that kind of money, it would be foolish to not follow the manufacturers instructions. I own 5A's and 1c's, and I never tried the 5A's non-biwire. I did own the 3A Signatures for a year+ and they benefited quite a bit with bi-wire, even when I was running two 2wq subs, and the high pass filters in front of the amp.

Will
Do it right for heavens sake. Presumably, your amps are in between the 2 speakers so that you have short speaker cables and long interconnect. That is what Vandersteen recommends and that is what works best. Bi-wire must have 4 seperate wires to each speaker, otherwise it is compromised. When you spend that much for a speaker, a couple of feet of cable shouldn't be an issue. I tried all brands of speaker and interconnects, and I like Anti-Cables the best. Those high priced spreads only cost more, but do nothing more..many times less than the Anti-cables. These are solid core, and sound the same in all frequency ranges. Try it... cheap and good...something nearly never found.