Single or Bi-wire?

Just upgraded the centre speaker..........has bi-wire option on it but have only one set of terminals for the centre channel.

I have Bi-wired in the past, this was by using two sets of terminals for the speaker.

Do i run the two cables to the single set of terminals?

TIA.....bob

 

yes

 

Does it really make much difference?
My center and front speakers are bi-wireable and I've been toying with the idea - but my equipment is fairly modest -- Acoustic Energy 100i and 107C (I think!) Denon 1802 amp and Sony NS900V DVD player.
I know I could just try it, but it will cost about £100 for new speaker cable. Anyone got direct experience of the change? (and how does it compare to expensive interconnects, which I'm not convinced I can tell any difference on).
I expect the audiophiles out there are now convinced I'm clinically deaf!

Simon

 

Cheers matt

 

I bi-wired my Monitor Audio 703's when I first got them, then tried removing one set of wires about 6 months ago to try to reduce the spaghetti jungle around the TV and didn't notice any difference in the sound. Needless to say, I didn't re-attach them!

I also don't hear a difference between interconnects.

Cheers,
Liam

 

I read a piece a while back and what it said was........ if
the manufacturers have put the option of Bi-wire on that product
it will perform better than using the single wire option.

Am i right in saying........single wire you are using the speakers crossover circuitry..........Bi-wire you are by-passing it..... and if that is correct, your speaker should perform and sound slightly better because the it hasn't gone through circuit boards to get the signals to the corresponding speakers.

Single v Bi-wire same as RGB v S-video......Optical v Coaxial

To be honest can't tell the difference between any of the connections when used with a decent innterconnect.

But i can tell the difference between a good and bad innterconnect for each of those connections.

And my car does go faster when it's polished....

 

Bi Wire!
Think it speaks for itself

 

Bob,
I'm sure I'll be corrected by better informed people on this forum (!), but my understanding of the way bi-wiring works is that having separate wires coming from as close to the amps output as possible minimizes the interference that can occur between the high and low frequencies a single pair would have to carry.
I don't think your assumption that the crossover circuitry is bypassed by bi-wiring is correct (ie I don't think the speakers' performance would be the same if you literally attached one pair to the tweeter and one pair to the bass speaker).

Thanks for your experience on bi-wiring Liam, anyone else heard differences, or not?

Simon

 

Speakers with two sets of five-way binding posts have the ability to independently driver the upper and lower frequency drivers bypassing the crossover. Such speakers are equipped with a jumper cable that connects both sets of binding posts together so that a signal applied to one post is applied to the corresponding post (positive to positive and negative to negative). However, the jumpers can be removed so that each set of binding posts may connect to their own speaker wires. The wires can then be connected to separate amplifiers (bi-amplifying) or connected to the same amplifier (bi-wiring).

 

Bob,

I'm not sure what a five-way binding post is, but most bi-wireable speakers do still involve the internal crossover. If you are talking about a configuration which does remove the internal crossover from the circuit, then you will need an external crossover.

I did read something from someone (OK, sorry for being so vague) who calculated the effect of bi-wiring would have (assuming that no external crossover is used) and it was smaller than the effect of moving one speaker by about an inch...

Personally, I would love to get my hands on some ATC active speakers which have 2 amplifiers built in - one drives the tweeter and one the woofer - and listen to how that sounds.

Cheers,
Liam

 

This was a quote from audiovideo 101 that i used.........have been to other sites and they do mention crossovers.......who is right?
Bi-wire/Bi-amping

The five-way binding post just means it can be connected to in five different ways.

Liam...........called into "active home cinema" monday only been open since november and fell in love with the sharp 50" plasma tuner/teletext only £8.5k picture was breathtaking.......one day!

 

Hi Bob,

I am not a great believer in biwiring speakers for AV use but possibly some speakers will benefit more than others.

If I remember correctly another way of biwiring is to connect the treble to A and the bass to B if you have two sets of speaker terminals that can both be on at the same time.

Best wishes from the Welsh Valley

 

Ian....haven't been blown away then................!!

Read a few write ups on it, some seem to be mis-leading, all part of the setting up i suppose, trying to find the best way......... as with other connections, will always be a talking point...........!Happy with the way it's going though. Floorstanders look small now have to get some bigger ones......

 

It is correct that bi-wiring will bypass some components in the cross-over.
Bi-wiring capable speakers must have a special cross-over to allow bi-wiring.
IMHO it will not entirely bypassed as you still need to filter out the low frequencies from the tweeter and the high ones from the mid/bass driver.
(If bi-wiring would bypass the x-over altogether you wouldn't need one for single wiring either.)

If you bi-wire by adding an additional run of speaker wire (say of the same type) you will increase (double) the diamater of the cable. This should already result in some change of the sound to some effect, mainly the bass. I.e. similar to change from 2sqm to 4sqm.

If you bi-wire from one terminal at the amp or from the A/B terminals (if available) should make no difference, internally they are wired together anyhow.
Well, the audiophile would probably argue that there is an additional switch in the path when using A/B but I think you agree that this is ........ you know what I mean.

Note that some manufactures like Dynaudio do not believe in bi-wiring and hence their speakers are not capable of doing so.


So I guess the only way to find out is to try. Personally I believe that increasing the diameter (single wired) will have a similar if not same effect.

 

I just bi-wired my speakers which I've had for a few years now, but have recently upgraded to the Sony TA-E/N 9000es system.

WOW!!!! what a difference. It really sounds as if I have an extra set of speakers. Everything is so very clear its as if the musicians are in my room.

One explanation I haven't read about is that the jumpers joining the sockets on the speaker were very poor quality. My QED speaker wire allowed more of the signal to reach the drivers than the metal jumpers. I wanted to bi-wire my surrounds but I didn't want the extra wire going around the room so instead of the jumper I used a small length of the qed wire to make the link. That also improved the sound.

I strongly suggest you try it. I had thought about it too long before doing it and was dissapointed I didn't bi-wirer sooner.

Here's my system:
Sony 32" TV,
Sony 735 DVD (multi region),
Sony TA-E9000ES (firmware version 2.5)
Sony TA-N9000ES,
Sony SLV-E810EE VHS Video,
Sony 750 Sky digibox (1.3m satellite dish),
Kef Q55 front (bi-wired), Q95c Centre, Q15 rear speakers
Rel Strata III Sub-woofer
QED original cables

marc

 

Exactly.

and that effect will only be a small percentage of an ohm over a 10' run, assuming that you use a reasonable diameter cable (16 guage, say).

There's an interesting site where they do double-blind tests. Especially interesting is the one for $990/m cables vs 16 guage zip cord. http://www.oakland.edu/~djcarlst/abx_wire.htm

Cheers,
Liam

 

I think of it like this.

Crossover.
Each set of inputs on the speaker (high/low) has it's own crossover (high/low pass filter). High allows only high, low allows only low.

Bi-wire.
I think of this a bit like the supply of water to your taps, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen.
Imagine you have the same pipe supply both taps. When the tap in the bath is running, then you turn on the tap in the kitchen you loose pressure slightly to both taps.
If you were to run independent pipes to each tap you'd get no such loss, although run from the same cistern.
Best of all is to have a cistern and pipe for each tap! (Bi-amping)

This of course is me talking bo****ks, but that's the way I explained it to my mate who is a builder!

Mark

 

There's probably more info than you ever want to know about bi-wiring in this thread, hopefully it will answer all your questions.

www.avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13214&highlight=BiWire

 

Try this, seems to explain the principle simply.

Si

 

Or this for a huge, long debate about whether any differences exist and whether they are audible.

Cheers,
Liam

 

What about tri-wiring. I have a set of Ruark Solstice floorstanders on my HiFi system and they are tri-wirable. Naturally I have done this as you cannot have a feature and not use it. Costs a lot in speaker cable though and I did notice a slight difference so it was worth it.

 

I bi-wired my Mission M73s not long after I got them, I upgraded from really cheap nasty cable, so I don't know if the bi-wire makes the difference or the fat QED Silver Anniversary. Anyway, it opened up the sound a lot, and they go a lot lower now.