which cable is best for me. should I bi-wire?

avalanche247

Standard Member
Joined
May 11, 2008
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Age
36
im looking for some help with re wiring my front speakers, and eventually my surround speakers. im using an onkyo TX-SR605 amp bi-wired to a pair of TDL nucleus kv6's but only using 1.5mm standard cable .im looking for some cable 10-20 quid a metre and ive been told i want it to be at least 4mm thick, also can i use airlock bananna plugs at both ends of the connection? one last thing, would it be make much difference not having the fronts bi-wired because doing this only enables me to run 5.1 and not 7.1 which the amp is capable of.

any help with this would really help me out as im not entirley clued up on this kinda stuff. thankyou
 
(a) Bi-wiring is a waste of time, effort and money. A single cable of the same sectional area as two cables will do the same job.

(b) 2.5 sqmm cable is more than ample for speaker duty on a single cable. Van Damme Blue is highly recommended @ <£2 p.m.

(c) Your last sentence impies you can bi-amp (5.1 + 2 extra for front duty). Now that's a different kettle of fish and worth the effort and money in wiring up for.
 
hey man thanks for replying. ive done some looking and my fronts are actually bi-amped, a fault on my part thinking it was the same thing. do you recomend using the same cable you suggested for bi-amping aswell? what about airlocks, how much do they implove quailty? pretty much every game on ps3 is in 7.1 and its making me think whether i should try that. my room is only about 4m2 do you think there would be much effect?

if anyone has any tips or advice, it would be very much appreciated
 
You could use 2.5 sq mm for the bass connection and 1.5 sq mm for the trebles. Van Damme make both if you want to keep them looking the same.

Don't know about airlocs, sorry. BUt to be honest the only advantage I can see is that they would prevent oxidisation of the cable ends which could impact quality. But as you can always strip back wire for a new end bit, and considering you may do this only every 5 years (depending on local conditions), I'd stick with normal banana plugs. Well, my $0.02!
 
ok, ive been looking round the site, and ive seen another thread from you saying that if the fronts are being bi amped from the amps spare rear channels then it doesnt make much difference as there is only one power source, is this the case? as this is my situation and the thought of 7.1 GTA4 is still a very interesting prospect!

thanks though for the advice on the cable, i had been looking for a while but not come across this brand, and have only since read good things about them. its also abit cheaper than expected so i have opted for the 4mm blue, probably not needed, but ive always been told the thicker the better. i wasnt even using bananna plugs before so hopefully they shud improve things aswell.

if u could clear the first thing up for me it would really help me out, thanks. geoff
 
ok, ive been looking round the site, and ive seen another thread from you saying that if the fronts are being bi amped from the amps spare rear channels then it doesnt make much difference as there is only one power source, is this the case? as this is my situation and the thought of 7.1 GTA4 is still a very interesting prospect!

Yes and no!

I don't profess to know all the technical reasons why by decoupling the bass drivers from the tweeters on separate amps (although driven from the same transformer) one gets a better output, all I know in my experience even bi-amping off the same receiver is marked improvement. As I also liked the 7.1 option as well, I invested in a separate power amp to bi-amp the fronts.

Some purists say that even this set up is not the perfect or ideal bi-amp set up. They often refer to it as passive bi-amping because each amplifier is still fed the full frequency range of the signal even though they may be feeding say a bass driver. Active bi-amping takes the source signal and splits out the frequencies to be fed to the amps. But this takes some balancing up to match the speaker characteristics and is usually beyond the average home enthusiast.
 
cheers for that mate, abit confusing but ive ordered the cable and im gonna hav a play around. nice 1!!
 
On the subject of airlocks, I do believe they need to be fitted with a special crimp tool, if you believe all the BS about them. Personally, bare cable providing you can keep any stray ends out of the way and don't intend to keep removing the cables. If you are worried about oxidisation, as has been said, you can always strip them back a bit every 5 years or so.
 

The latest video from AVForums

TV Buying Guide - Which TV Is Best For You?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom