Benefits and Drawbacks to Shotgun Speaker Cables

You folks are right. It can become pretty confusing. I can see how Craig and Swampwalker could see the two seperate bi-wiring cables as being a "shotgun" configuration. While I have never been a fan of internal bi-wiring, that is not to say that it might not work out for some folks. Personally, i just don't see the benefits to splitting the signal within the same cable jacket. Sean
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I have found the only drawback to using shotgunned cable is there bulk.My wife can only see the difference but wow the sound improvement is huge.Every aspect is vastly improved upon.Size, space, frequency extremes, dynamics.Most of all is all the subtle stuff all that extra music.To do all this the termination is so important.

Max:

No offense taken, at all, sir, in fact I am grateful for your efforts to steer us all straight. And I fully concur that common terms and definitions would be a wonderful thing. As this thread demonstrates, such a thing is still somewhat out of our grasp, unfortunately, and I suppose I did nothing to advance that cause with my previous posts. I stand by my concepts, but will be happy to agree to anything anyone can post that will establish some common nomenclature.

chas

Costrosk,you and I do have a different idea of waht "shogun" means. My only real point of contention with what you are saying is that you can in fact"true" bi-wire with a single stereo amp. All of the speaker manufacturers that I am aware of that put bi-wire connectors on their speakers(I have had speakers set up like this nearly 20 years)refer to bi-wireing as two sets of speaker wire connected in paralel(both sets of wire running from the same amp outputs) from each output on a stereo amp to the four terminals on the back of each speaker. I.E. two connections on the amp end + and - for each channel(the + and - conductors are connected together at the amp), and four connections on the speaker end 2+ and 2- for each speaker. You are correct that to bi-amp you need the same speaker wire set up(two stereo sets) they are just not run in paralel from one amp but run from two seperate amps.
From the Vandersteen manual"Bi-wiring provides many of the sonic attributes of bi-amping without the cost and complexity of two stereo amps. Bi-wiring is recommended for all systems using a receiver, integrated amplifier or single stereo amplifier. Four identical runs of equal length speaker cables are required.(two per speaker)"and"Connect both speaker cables to your amplifier. If possible, use only one spade lug to connect both wires to each terminal as shown in the enlarged view of an amp connection." sorry we will have to do without the "as shown" part. Das Vedanya!

Max my boy- interesting to see you quoting RV ;>) But you are correct. The difference in nomenclature is with single biwire vs. double which I believe is the same as internal vs. external or internal vs. shotgun. In my mind, shotgun=external biwire, while internal=single. Now RV says that true biwire requires two sets of cables, connected to same posts at speaker end, not even terminated together. Well, I guess I can live with that as true biwire, and I will say that in my recent upgrade, I went from an external biwire (2 spades at amp to 4 at speakers) to a "true" biwire, with 4 spades at amp (two on each binding post) to 4 at speaker (two on woofer and 2 on mid/tweets). It does sound great, but you do have to be careful about the + and - spade touching at the amp. That would be called "blown outputs" biwiring, the most expensive form.