Has biwire speaker cabling become "old" ?


I notice some makers are not stocking biwire termination. Has biwire gone out of favor ? Was it sonically meaningless ?
Have speaker makers dropped it ? Do us owners of biwire built speakers need to resort to jumpers or aftermarket biwire cables now ?
garn509
timrhu
2,713 posts
03-20-2015 7:58am 
Anytime you can keep signals separate it's usually a good things. The signals are different on each run and it's night to keep them away from each other if you can. Higher resolution systems will shows the differences most of the time.
Ctsooner

"Not sure where you got this information, but if you are biwiring using only one amp, the signal is identical on both cables." <<<  your response to my original post.


Actually you are incorrect.  Because of reflected impedances the high frequencies curent will travel up the wire connected to the mid/tweeter and the low frequencies curent up the wire connected to the woofer. All frequencies are present but not the same amount of current in each wire.

So much info to process.  I'm certainly a novice compared to the folks in this discussion. It appears that my single biwiring may be causing a phase shift according to Nordost? According to Audioquest,  they recommend the best solution for biwiring is two separate identical runs of cables. However they still offer single biwire options on their cables? Has anyone heard from Mr. Cardas regarding this matter?

I'm going to do a true biwire with two identicle runs of cable. Can I get some suggestions on brands and AWG?
Levinson no.334 
Paradigm Reference studio 100v2
N

forget gauge.  That doesn't really matter.  Geometry and product are more important etc....  Personally I'd try Audioquest or Cardas.  Both are nice.  AQ is very neutral up and down the range and you need the DBS unit to get the best sound.  Type 44 or something like that can be a starting place.. Just look at their site.  Cardas can be darker at times.  Not a bad thing in high end audio.  It's a really nice cable.  Don't drive yourself nuts as the cable isn't as big a difference maker as spending the extra money on upgrading a full component. Too many folks lose site of this when building a system.  Richard Vandersteen had some great talking points about this topic at a seminar he did last year at Audio Connections.  He's actually coming back in May I believe.

Nordost to me can suck the life out of the sound.  I have friends who own stores who swear by it though.  Personally I have heard the Odin mk II I think they are on in a full Macintosh/Wilson Sasha 2 system and I didn't love it at all.  I couldn't live with it. I felt it sounded better with Transparent cable.  I won't buy from Transparent because Karen and her husband stole their designs from Bruce Brisson of MIT when they started out.  MIT was always very good cable for the levinson, but personally I'd stick with AQ or Cardas (who makes the OEM wires for MANY of the top audio wire brands).