Considering that the feedback changes the effect of this resistor and makes it approach 0 ....
... and the load changes the feedback.
Historically this was never provided for bi-wiring, it was provided for Bi-Amping to reduce IM distortion and/or tailor amps to frequency range.
Systems designed to be bi-amped typically do not have internal crossovers. Systems with properly designed passive crossovers make poor candidates for bi-amping. Amplifier response varies with the load and driver response varies in combination with the driving amplifier and the parallel loads of the additional drivers.
This is quite easy to demonstrate: 2 identical power amps y'd from the source. Drive the LS full range, bi-wired and bi-amped. There are 3 distinct responses, all easily identifiable.
Some drivers make poor bi-amping candidates without either active or passive equalization other than crossover slopes.
There is no, and never has been, any free lunch.
@heaudio123 I don't understand why you are so antagonistic. My examples are stated necessarily simplistic to communicate concepts. Are you a manufacturer? Audio sales? "atmasphere, as someone who designs amps (for many applications), I cannot agree at all with your comment w.r.t. amount of feedback and sounds profile." from
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/it-looks-like-a-debate-to-me?page=2
heaudio123 you have an interesting argument , I'm going to read the link and your response at least one more time . I'm going to assume that they " qaucustics " used thier own speaker and cables .
1) Where is the detailed equipment review. They say a "floor stranding speaker", then link to their Q40, but don’t explicitly say that is the model used, but then make a statement in the report about "Secondly at and above the typical cross-over frequency of 1 – 2 kHz, the intermodulation distortion has been reduced by up to 30dB.", -- BUT-- the speaker they linked to has a 2.3KHz crossover frequency. (The cross-over order has an impact on the back-EMF as well).
2) I couldn’t find any mention of the speaker wire used. Weird, really really weird in an article about Speaker Wire.
3) Very strange the amplifier is not listed, since this is pretty critical for a test like this. If I go out of my way to choose an amplifier with a really poor damping factor, then back EMF from speakers will have a bigger effect on the other speaker single or bi-wire, but you could make the differences larger with high damping factor. Weird to use what sounds like a "cheap" CD player/amplifier. Why not use high quality amplification?
4) 0 mention of the current probe and/or current probe amplifier used, hence no ability to validate it’s measurement performance and what it’s IM distortion is.
5) The unforgivable mistake of not measuring IM right at the drivers, after the crossovers, with single and bi-wire, which is the only proper way to isolate IM between single and bi-wire. (or better yet measure the IM at the output of the drivers).
6) Their claim of "IM" reduction is FALSE, and CANNOT be concluded, since they are not comparing what actually goes into the tweeters / woofers, but what they measured on the cables. IN FACT, if you add the Red line from Figure 6., to the Green line in Figure 7 (the two biwired measurements), you essentially get the same as the Blue line in Figure 6/7, especially where you would most expect it, i.e. 1-3KHz, in fact, not essentially the same, but almost exactly the same. That tells me that their claim in Figure 6 of reduced IM distortion (to the tweeter) is false since they have not established any of that current was flowing to the tweeter, and in fact, Figure 7, pretty much proves that no, that current was not flowing to the tweeter.
7) The 5 tones from 100-200Hz are flat on the CD, but are about 5-7 db different on the graphs, which makes sense on the single wire, or woofer graph where the impedance of the woofer in these frequencies could have a large impact, BUT, they should completely disappear in the Tweeter only graph, as in theory, that is only current in the Woofer wire. If the amplifier has a good damping factory, the voltage response will not change much, and the tweeter in a bi wire configuration should not see any difference in the amplitude of the tones.
8) Look at red graph in Figure. 6. HOW did a large NEW tone suddenly appear at 50Hz that is not in any other graph? That is simply not possible unless something changed.
9) Given the tweeter current draw from 300-900Hz is 90-100db down, the assignment of IM distortion products to single wiring in Figure. 7, where the distortion products are 60-70db down is an erroneous and impossible conclusion. More likely is test variation from temperature, voice coil heating, or ... the way they did the wiring which is not an actual comparison of single wiring to bi-wiring (it sounds good though doesn’t it) , but ... given 1-8, I am not surprising by 9,
"The single wired measurements were taken with two runs of speaker cable wired in parallel (speaker shorting pieces in place) and the bi-wired measurements were taken using the same arrangement with the shorting pieces removed. In this way both measurements used the same cross-sectional area of cable to eliminate any effect of lower resistance on our measurements."
Hmm, nobody took a note of the posted link in this thread. That explains why bi-wire works and the science behind it. With measurements, graphs and all. Rather clever test track and method they have composed to use to be able to measure and show the effect of Intermodulation in a same cables single (wires) configuration and in bi-wire configuration.
It is making a scientific proven difference but if it is detected by ear or not. That are determined by several OTHER factors. So audiophiles that are able to hear the benefits have some of the other factors aligned (room, speakers, gear and so on).
Used test method:
Notes
The test tone CD was played using an all in one CD player/amplifier set at half volume into a pair of floor-standing speakers. The current probe measurements were analysed using TrueRTA via a Tascam US144 USB audio interface. The single wired measurements were taken with two runs of speaker cable wired in parallel (speaker shorting pieces in place) and the bi-wired measurements were taken using the same arrangement with the shorting pieces removed. In this way both measurements used the same cross-sectional area of cable to eliminate any effect of lower resistance on our measurements.
There is a couple of analogies that are used in the explanation. That is needed for me anyway to be able to grasp the complex working of it. That may need to be re read and let sink in.
So we see that there is much more than some false logic that will cloud our thinking and make the individual more comfortable to put for example this specific effect aside. When it is not properly understood or known.
Historically this was never provided for bi-wiring, it was provided for Bi-Amping to reduce IM distortion and/or tailor amps to frequency range.
Some consumers (and importantly also reviewers) seem to believe that it
does, and prefer to buy loudspeakers which provide this option. Some
manufacturers may therefore feel compelled to provide this option due
entirely to these marketing pressures and little else.
Let's face no one knows why bi-wiring improves sound quality. Not one single credible explanation offered so far.
Some consumers (and importantly also reviewers) seem to believe that it does, and prefer to buy loudspeakers which provide this option. Some manufacturers may therefore feel compelled to provide this option due entirely to these marketing pressures and little else.
On the other hand many believe it doesn't - including those manufacturers who on principle don't even feel it relevant enough to allow their users the opportunity to try it out.
Some might even be of the opinion that bi-wiring actually makes the sound worse.
Cable manufacturers and dealers on the other hand....
Funny, I feel the same about people who link to their blogs to appear erudite but then make fundamental errors or overly simplified generalizations that result in the wrong conclusion most of the time ... Hint, is the emitter resistor in the feedback or not?
^^^^ typical post of someone reading the title and inserting their 0¢.
@ieales "
^^^^ typical post of someone reading the title and inserting their 0¢.
'Good' speaker wire is meaningless. The cable is part of a system and $$$ is often sonically and measurably worse than ¢¢¢."
I've been called many things but "typical" is not one of them. A first! I don't understand your second and third sentences quoted above. Please educate me.
Lastly, in the spirit of banter, by "good" I mean that the owner of the rig and cables thinks they are "good" and I don't see how that is meaningless.
@ieales Thank You for the link, I read it yesterday , very interesting .
The question is does it improve the sound ? i.e. does the sound stage increase , get deeper , do you have more of a 3D effect , is the music clearer or sharper ? I asked the question because I can't ( as a retired biomedical equipment technician ) grasp why it seems to sound better to many who have tried it ( without increasing the overall awg ) , but I had the same feeling about power cords and outlets until I tested and heard the improvements so I am curious about bi-wiring .
I must say that I don't get the bi-wiring routine. It seems to me all that is being accomplished is adding more connections (points of failure). If you have good speaker cable to begin with doubling it does virtually zero. The signal still has to go through the passive crossover with its inherent flaws. The amp is still going to feel the back EMF of the woofers. Oh well. Some things should just remain mysterious to me.
Your post reminds me of the $2 wine tasting we did a few years ago. In the end, it came down to a contest between Thunderbird and Ripple (with Midnight express as a third-party candidate).
I personally preferred the Ripple, but my Marketing partner was a strong proponent of Thunderbird. While my boss, a purported oenophile leaned to Midnight Express (while refusing to taste any of them) on the grounds that the label was more attractive.
I suspect that any of the 3 finalists would have improved the quality of my sound system. But I take exception to Glenlivet being mentioned in this context. Scientific tests have shown that a few drops applied to your speaker terminals and a few more to your tongue, create a dramatic improvement to your system.... no 'beliefs' here -- just hard science!!
FYI, whenever these discussions come up I think of MIT cables, who put crossover components into their little black boxes. Clearly, a little inductance and capacitance in the cables seems to have sold many a listener.
When I build bi-wire terminals on speakers, it is only with bi-amping in mind. Why would you add 8ft of speaker wire, rather than 3 inches in the crossover?
Amplifiers are more susceptible to impedance variations than we think, even in solid state. I think we are hearing these changes, and when you bi-wire you, perhaps to a very small amount, are changing R, L and C.
Now, the question, _if_ I am correct, and _if_ it makes a difference, is this small change worth $5? I have no idea, but have you thought about room acoustics?? ;-)
No ! Many non bi-wire speakers can be designed with an L pad in the midrange and or tweeter circuit. In the Vandersteen 2 and 3 they are very carefully deployed with a very high quality device that should not be used frequently as one might a tone control. The range is significantly less than available via most tone controls. You can read more by downloading a manual from the Vandersteen website.
finally, at least for Vandersteen IF you wish to preserve time and phase, do NOT use a different wire for the two legs of the Biwire!!! a notable exception is the new Audioquest wire that has the RF trap on the bass.
The above two posts are valuable in that they both touch on what may be useful points. Bi-wiring, for example, with at least some Vandersteen speakers (e.g. 2CE), apparently allows the user to make tonal changes via dials on the back of the speaker. In other words, the speaker is designed to be bi-wired, and to allow the user to adjust the midrange and tweeter levels.
Assuming that the two features are not distinct (i.e. completely separate), then of course the combination will allow the user to change the sound. Considering that to be an advantage is one thing, but to argue that bi-wiring alone improves sound is another.
With regard to @hshifi's point that bi-wiring allows the user to "tune" the wires is similar. That would be very different from the claim that a simple bi-wire setup is somehow superior to a single cable. Simply adding "more" cable is not in any way supportive of bi-wire being superior, and for what should be obvious reasons.
Did these discussions exist when audio equipment had tone controls? Everybody talks about changing what you hear with different wires. Wasn’t it easier in the past when if something didn’t quite sound right you could go up to your preamp And make a simple adjustment?
Hello, I feel like we flew down the perpetual rabbit hole. That being said I wanted to add or highlight some of the comments. If you have those hard metal factory jumpers please put them away with your manuals and just use some decent copper wire as jumpers. Second is the by biwireing it gives you some advantages. The first being you can increase your amount of wire going to the speakers but more importantly you can use different speaker cables for the two sets of terminals. You could have a thick copper cable on the woofers and a smaller silver cable on the tweeters. It gives you the ability to customize the sound. You do not have to do this but I do. I use a 12 ga copper wire on the woofers and a double up 16 ga on the tweeter. This is Analysis Plus speaker wire. I have tried several combinations and this sounded incredible. Bottom line it gives you the options to add more cable and/or use a different cable to optimize your sound. That being said please do speaker placement optimization and room correction with room treatments first before spending money on these things. Thank you all and I appreciate all of your help and insight.
This sure sounds like hard science. Lots and lots of "I believe" in there. He couldn't even be bothered to listen to it. It is no more authoritative than Vandersteen's anecdotal evidence. Is there any evidence that Richard Vandersteen does not use science in his designs? I would say that quite the opposite is true. In fact, he would say that designers that choose to not pay attention to phase in their speakers are absolutely wrong. He does back that with measurements. I am not saying either is right or wrong. I am just pointing out that many people here love to pick out the expert that they want to believe. You know, appeal to authority.
How ironic that you would accuse me of cherry-picking, then pluck just one of a number of quotes from Shaw that I provided, while ignoring those that include scientific reasons supporting his skepticism.
The onus of proof is on those, including Vandersteen, who claim that biwiring DOES make a meaningful difference, to support those claims with science. Has he done so? I am still awaiting proof that he has.
This:
Is there any evidence that Richard Vandersteen does not use science in his designs?
is a silly straw man. No one has suggested anything of the sort. And of course the fact that Vandersteen does, broadly speaking, use science in his designs, is irrelevant to the specific question being debated.
Shaw and the many other skeptics have provided technical reasons why biwiring does not make a meaningful, audible difference. If you are able to provide evidence to the contrary, I'll be happy to listen to it.
@tomic601 Thank you for your offer , since you are a Thiel owner you might have read about my theroy on seperation of polarity on the Thiel owner forum. @chorus Thank you , 2 of the 3 who converted are using 18 gauge for the tweeter/midrange and 14 guage for the bass . This is another thing to consider if I go to bi-wiring . @mrklasou You have done testing ! Something that my friend and I have been doing for many weeks, upgrades or changes on our systems , which in the end is the only way hear what works or doesn't .
I read all the posts and appreciate them all , this hobby is a constant learning experience , at the same time I'm trying not to fall into making it a money pit .
@bigkidz i have an 8’ set of AQ type 6 shotgun biwire, spades all around w Vandy size spades on speaker end - perfect for your listening session - they have about 50k miles on them as I loan them out to the agnostic for fun. I can put them in mail to you Sunday, chlorox wipe included !!!! jim
Several thoughts, all tempered with real world listening to a variety of speakers ( currently I own Apogee, Quad, Thiel and Vandersteen, three of those four vaunted designers sent them from the factory with biwire provisions.
The Vandersteen recommendation is based on science and listening with his products, since 1977. He does recommend an external biwire configuration If possible and get cables spaced appropriate 2”+. He is a pretty frugal designer/ engineer, the Model two in various versions over a quarter million sold, has beat inflation- IF he didn’t believe bi wired sounded better with additional cost to manufacture, it wouldn’t be on his product. Obviously there is hardly agreement on many principles of speaker design. Many a lauded designer cares nothing about pistonic motion and tolerates out of phase breakup in the passband ( see the Vandersteen Utube video on pistonic motion ) ain’t it great to have choices ???
Vandersteen model 2 to 7 including the high pass amplifier all have biwire provisions.
your results will always vary
enjoy the music and Libations of your choice, Ripple included
I mentioned that 3 people converted ( added 2d pair of speaker posts ) to bi-wiring and liked the results . All three had already upgraded the crossovers with higher quality components , I just got to the speakers yesterday ( after having installed the same 9.5awg wire from the amp board to the new Cardas speaker posts, the same 9.5awg wire I used to put together my speaker wires ) when I installed Cardas speaker posts with the next upgrade it will be the wiring to the crossovers , one step at a time to evaluated the effect , the bi-wiring if I go that route would be the last thing I do .
It seems the experiences , opinions and even the manufactures are on both sides of the benefits or lack of .
I just have to wait until social distancing over so I can go over to my friends house and listen to his newly bi-wired speakers .
I do not hear a difference on my Vandersteen Model 5As but it has been a while since I did a comparison.
Here is the real question that I spoke to Audioquest about. Would I be better buying a more expensive run of speaker cable and using a set of their jumpers or buying a lower priced run of their speaker wire already set-up for bi-wire. They advised me that their new speaker cable bi-wire line was better then a higher priced single run. I did not ask why but that was their advice. I never did try it though.
Violating my own promise, I will make a few very simple observations: For reference my system is quite extensive and has been tuned (e.g.: room, TT setup) pretty darned well, although i am not a maniac about it. 1. I have heard small, but meaningful differences between interconnect cables, and much smaller ones for speaker cables. real, but generally small. 2. I mostly heard difference vs cables that we would all agree are crap. That's a technical term, but think generic, 40 year old, from some box somewhere int eh attic 3. I have seen myriad cases, in my system and elsewhere of cables that are basically broken. Corrosion. loose terminations, poor contact etc.
I speculate that sometimes changing wires fixes these issues and is heard, but the reason is sim-attributed. 4. Want to improve wire gauge? Make the wires shorter. Now, to be honest, with an 8-ohm speaker impedance, or 30,000 ohm amp input resistance, does the difference between 0.05 and 0.03 ohms matter? I'll leave that up to you. 5. Construction - e.g. dialectic material, is much more important than many other esoteric factors. I do go out of my way to use interconnects with expanded polyethelene or foam teflon or something similar. Its nto all that expensive anyway. 6. Many cables are so think and stuff that they place significant strain on connections. I have seen many, many examples of bad connections because someone is using $500 cables that that thicker than my thumb and stuff as a garden hose. Oh wait, they were garden hoses, scratch that. In fact i have had to service equipment that was actually damaged by the strains (like expensive [brand omitted] terminals breaking... think about that) And as MC said, in most cases the money and or time could likely have made a much bigger difference elsewhere. having had too many Vandys to count, staring in the very early 80s, i never benefited from bi wiring BTW. Of course, since my system is also a test bed, i really hat to have complicated connections, rinnign from lab ot system and spending 20 minuets fighting with wires is not my idea of productive use of time. SO like i said, i'm biased. G
Bi-Wiring is provable and measurable. Audible depends on myriad factors.
Too many with zero technical skill or training hear phantasms, some chemically induced. Their posts are not worth the bits to transmit.
As far as millercarbons nonsense, after repairing, recapping & Bi-Wring my 35 year old Spica TC-50, and verifying I liked what I'd done with lesser cables, I spent 8x their original cost on Kimber BiFocalXL. Worth every penny.
The terminals were fitted for one reason and one reason only: to give the user choice. Have I ever used them at exhibitions? No. Have I ever used them for critical listening? No. Have I ever used them during the design of the speaker? No. When we were offering the biwire terminals, right at the end of the design process (which has all been with single wire) I took a saw to the prototype PCB, cut in in half to isolate the bass and tweeter sections and then made a pretty PCB layout based on that. Did I listen to the biwired crossover before authorising production? No. Do I believe that even 0.00000001% of enhanced performance can be gained? No.
This sure sounds like hard science. Lots and lots of "I believe" in there. He couldn't even be bothered to listen to it. It is no more authoritative than Vandersteen's anecdotal evidence. Is there any evidence that Richard Vandersteen does not use science in his designs? I would say that quite the opposite is true. In fact, he would say that designers that choose to not pay attention to phase in their speakers are absolutely wrong. He does back that with measurements. I am not saying either is right or wrong. I am just pointing out that many people here love to pick out the expert that they want to believe. You know, appeal to authority.
Wrt Vandersteen, anyone who thinks it is a breakthrough that a magnetic field exists around current carrying wires and that they collapse and expand with the signal .... Hasn't taken a high school physics course. It is laughable someone would put that in writing.
Absent magnetic materials surrounding the cable (don't use that cable collar :-)) that field is going to be quite linear hence no distortion products AND as the two wires run parallel and opposite direction the field strength is very small wrt the signal size. Two strikes, Vandersteen is out.
I agree withe writer who said Scotch can affect the sound. I havr found Glennlivet works best. Your mileage may differ depending on how twisted your dna strands are. We at noseyparkerkiller are studying the millions of dna possibilities in your genetic information and will soon be able to send you a list, based on our proprietary scientific studies, which will advise you which of our proprietary tweaks worst best. In the meantime we have found that thunderbird wine works almost as well as the Glenlivet and leaves you with more cash to spend on our dna advice and tweaks.
"So Alan Shaw says it doesn’t matter and Richard Vandersteen says it absolutely matters. Two very respected speaker designers with completely different views of the same subject. Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience? What a logical fallacy. I would not add a set of binding posts to a set of speakers just to try it out. If there are already two sets of binding posts, give it a try for yourself and make your own decision."
There are several problems with your post. First, assuming that you were responding to my post, I didn’t cherry-pick anything. I simply reproduced some posts of Shaw’s that explain his position.
Secondly, can Vandersteen actually demonstrate HOW it matters? Shaw explains why, in his view, it doesn’t, and is typically rigorous in his scientific approach to such matters. That doesn’t mean that he cannot be mistaken about something, but it does mean that he can explain, with a scientific foundation, why he holds a particular position.
With a quick search, I found anecdotal claims by Vandersteen that bi-wiring sounds better on his speakers, and this:
Additional experiments with a Hall Effect probe revealed that high-current bass frequencies created a measurable field around the wires that expanded and collapsed with the signal. We believe that this dynamic field modulates the smaller signals, especially the very low level treble frequencies. With the high-current signal (Bass) separated from the low-current signal (Treble) this small signal modulation was eliminated as long as the cables were separated by at least an inch or two. (To keep the treble cable out of the field surrounding the bass cable.)
Note that he says "We believe...". Not exactly hard science, though perhaps he is on to something.
I found a related article (on "qacoustics" UK) with some experiments appearing to support the ides that bi-wiring confers benefits. Don, a regular and knowledgable contributor to the audiosciencereview.com site had this to say in response:
Because a single wire carries woofer and tweeter current; bi-wiring means the woofer wire carries only woofer current, tweeter wire tweeter current, though voltage is the same for both. A plot of voltage would show the same voltage applied to woofer and tweeter (less changes due to wire loss, insignificant in practice).
Single wire: Amp -> single cable -> woofer + tweeter = single cable carries all current
Bi-wire: Amp -> woofer cable -> woofer = woofer cable carries only woofer current; crossover reduces tweeter current to woofer
Amp -> tweeter cable -> tweeter = tweeter cable carries only tweeter current; crossover reduces woofer current to tweeter
The crossover makes the woofer look like a higher impedance to the tweeter cable so tweeter current is reduced in the woofer wire, and likewise the tweeter crossover makes a higher impedance to the woofer cable for tweeter current, so there is less interaction in the wire. The net energy the amp delivers, and that the woofer and tweeter each receive, is the same whether you use a single wire or bi-wire. The wire itself contributes negligibly to distortion and so the bi-wire argument is a red herring (is a false argument). The amplifier and speakers dominate (by orders of magnitude) the distortion.
HTH - Don
And another commenter on a different site:
QAcoustics article cited above shows just how SUBTLE the differences can be between Bi-Wire and Single Wire connected Speakers. Change in IMD Levels are only 1-3 dB, with the IMD voltages being70 dBbelow the Fundamental Signal Levels...which is 1 part in 10^7 or 0.00001 %.....probably impossible for even Golden Ears to detect.
If someone has a scientific explanation for why bi-wiring may be superior in practice, please do provide it.
I only bi-wire when I'm using speakers that have that capability. I will say that if the straps are gold plated brass, you should replace them with some good wire or the Cardas copper straps.
The crossovers in your speaker virtually split your cable into multiple cable of different frequency bands. Unlike the speakers themselves through mechanical non linearities and Doppler induced IM distortion or amplifier non linearities creating IM distortion, cables don’t have those mechanisms, certainly not within many orders of magnitude of anything else in the system. Resistance is not a non linearity so it does not contribute to IM distortion. As mentioned previously other than increasing gauge, makes no difference. Bi amping can reduce IM distortion which can justify multiple terminals.
I don’t believe or not believe either, I work on the soundness of the arguments and I have yet to hear a solid argument other than increased gauge for biwiring. If you are purposely trying to change the frequency response with cables then it would be easier with a biwiring setup, but cables make poor tone controls.
Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience?
So Alan Shaw says it doesn't matter and Richard Vandersteen says it absolutely matters. Two very respected speaker designers with completely different views of the same subject. Do you just cherry pick one because it supports what you believe or fits your experience? What a logical fallacy. I would not add a set of binding posts to a set of speakers just to try it out. If there are already two sets of binding posts, give it a try for yourself and make your own decision.
Maybe biwiring is akin to the color of your favorite car? I have my tried bi-wiring with my Sonus Faber Venere 3.0 because I purchased bare wire with 4 wire construction and I had the banana clips on hand to wire up the neighborhood.
At the time I had a NAD C375 BEE and I hooked tested single wiring versus biwiring with one set hooked up to speaker A and one set to speaker B. I thought the sound from the biwiring was fuller - akin to the old days of turning on the loudness button.
My next test was to biwire from the Speaker A terminal and the sound was identical. I moved and decided to try Blue Jean Cables and purchased the internal bi-wire configuration and have been happy with the my sound even as I upgraded my equipment to a McIntosh preamp and amp set-up.
In the end I have a choice - to enjoy listening to music or aspire for 11 to magically appear on the volume knob. While I'm open to magic, I'm enjoying the music.
Yes, you'd like to think those unambiguously clear words of such a highly respected designer such as Alan would carry some weight with audiophiles.
Alas, not all of us can be so readily persuaded - amazingly enough not even all Harbeth customers! Hence the tone of almost exasperation in Alan's voice.
We audiophiles do seem to be a suspicious, superstitious lot. Almost anything said by anyone regardless of their authority or experience, is regularly challenged and attacked by us. I should know, before I escaped this compulsion, I used to spend more time with tweaking than listening for many a year. Oh, how my fingers used to ache from the endless weekly routine of cleaning all the possible signal and electrical contacts me and my pipe cleaners could reach!
Nowadays I hardly bother at all, and guess what happended to the sound? Nothing, nothing at all.
Market forces and vested financial interests do also have a lot to answer for this confused state of affairs, but there's no denying the sheer persistent hardheaded arrogance of certain of us audiophiles.
As Alan says with a hint of sarcasm,
"But what do I know about it? I only design the speakers ....... !"
Alan Shaw, the designer of Harbeth speakers, has typically strong views on the topic. These three quotes were taken from three separate posts on the Harbeth forum.
"I really wish this subject of biwiring would just disappear up its own terminals. I don't have many ambitions in life but killing this discussion by deleting the biwire terminals and reverting to just one input pair is going to be at the top of my 2011 New Year's Resolution list for the remaining models that still feature biwire legacy terminals! You've given me a real motivational boost!
"The terminals were fitted for one reason and one reason only: to give the user choice. Have I ever used them at exhibitions? No. Have I ever used them for critical listening? No. Have I ever used them during the design of the speaker? No. When we were offering the biwire terminals, right at the end of the design process (which has all been with single wire) I took a saw to the prototype PCB, cut in in half to isolate the bass and tweeter sections and then made a pretty PCB layout based on that. Did I listen to the biwired crossover before authorising production? No. Do I believe that even 0.00000001% of enhanced performance can be gained? No.
"Of all the subjects ranged over in the speaker arena, this one is a complete and utter waste of time - in my opinion. But what do I know about it? I only design the speakers ....... !
"Biwiring does do one thing very well though: it introduces the one and only, much appreciated 'fiddle factor' to allow individuals a physical and psychological interaction with their speakers. What else can you do to them other than dust and polish them?"
***
"A biwire link is gold plated brass about, say, 30mm long. The claim is that this particular 30mm long piece of highly conductive metal is somehow, magically, more important than any other 30mm piece of perhaps less highly conductive metal anywhere else in the chain between the loudspeaker drive units and the power station a hundred miles away which is supplying the current that causes the cone to move and a sound to be generated. Does that soundlogical? Does that sound an intellectual argument that a professor of engineering at a university could or should set his students studying? Of course not. It's a daft fixation on what is, from a point of electrical conduction, probably the best "link" in the chain from the point that the mains supply enters the house.
"The biwire link has this fascination for one reason and one reason alone - it's accessible by the user. So it lends itself to being fiddled with and to all the associated gratification of adjusting ones hifi. "This is a non-issue.Pick a genuinely 'weak' part of the signal chain and experiment, but this big, fat brass part with countless billions of surplus electrons isn't the hold grail. Of that I am totally and absolutely certain as I've stated. You'd be better off paying attention to, let's say, 30mm of copper track on the printed circuit board that the binding posts are pressing onto which isvastlyless conductive because it is thousands or millions of times thinner than the biwire link. But of course, that would involve opening the speaker and voiding the warranty."
***
"Do the exponents of this biwire mania have any concept at all that a current is acirculatingconcept? Circulating from the power station, through your amp, cables, crossover, voice coil and back again to the power station? Anyone into biwire connectors grasping that concept please? That concept of how electricity actually works is why there is a live and neutral pin on your wall socket. There has to be a flow. And what impedes the flow is resistance. And resistance is associated with thin parts, like the voice coil (about 6 ohms). So the fact that the biwire link has a resistance of perhaps 0.000001 ohm compared to the voice coil's 6 ohms means that as a component in the circulating loop, what dominates the resistance by ahugefactor is the voice coil.
"If the concept of a circulating current is unclear or distrusted then the whole scientific world we live in collapses."
Oddly my girlfriend and I just spoke about this last week while she was painting my fingernails. Coronavirus social distancing is getting to her. Digressing. We have this Plate Lunch equivalent purchase values. She freaked when I bought MIT biwire cables. We could have eaten takeout twice a week for a year on what I spent on them. However, when I installed them, she immediately heard the difference (good) when she walked into the room. Not even in the sweet spot. She does have a really good ear. So we spoke about it. Why? I gave her my 40 years in electronics reasons why it should not make a difference. But it does. She came up with this ordering take out analogy. I order shrimp scampi and she orders a caesar salad. The restaurant puts them both into ONE container (one cable). DoorDash delivers, she will have scampi on her salad and I'm going to have caesar dressing on my scampi. That would not happen if they are placed into two different containers. And the longer the trip, the greater the contamination. That's a blonde non audiophile thought. And I now have red fingernails.
I own bi-wireable speakers. I also had a hard time accepting that splitting one cable would possibly make a difference. At that time I was using some heavy gauge, copper Monster wire and planned an upgrade of some kind. I was in the Kimber Room at a show in 2019 and asked "Who here might best counsel be on which Kimber cable to buy"? The gentleman I asked said "I think I can do that". After asking about system and my listening style he suggested an 8 biwire product. A 3 meter run was about $280.00 and could be made and delivered in 3-4 days. The 8 wire strand would be split as follows: 3 to treble, 5 to bass.
This was Mr Ray Kimber himself assisting me.
Interesting side note: My counselor/mentor/friend who has the same speakers as I do was recently listening at my home. He was trying to figure out why my system produced better sound than his. He does not bi-wire. So I feel I have an improvement thanks to the bi-wire. Did I do a blind test? No.
Has anyone got some scientific blind test results??
In my experience, my Silverline Sonata-III speakers with biwired cable sound more analytical, even if the cable is warm (like the Silverline's own biwire cable).
I tend to agree with several other respondents, especially regarding adding terminals to the speakers if they were manufactured with just one set — I don’t think I would bother. But the Martin Logan 60XT’s I bought allow bi-wiring/bi-amping. I had one good amp and didn’t feel the need to buy a second amp, but the speaker cables to allow bi-wiring weren’t much more expensive than the standard cables, so I thought “why not?” I don’t know whether the bi-wiring improves the sound, but it was inexpensive to check that box, so I went for it.
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