Bi-wiring Speakers

Munkeh

Munkeh

Munkeh

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Ok, so I have just bought myself a nice pair of monitor audio RS6 speakers. Now I looking into wiring them up. It suggests in the manual that I bi-wire them, which as far as I understand it is running two pairs of wires from one pair of terminals on the amp to the speaker.

Now personally I can't see the benefit of this? The speakers have a bridge across the terminals on the back so what difference would I get from running a whole new set of cables except for the small amount of loss across that short bridge?

Can someone enlighten me as whether it is worthwhile to do and what cable setup I should go for.

My options so far seem to be:

Single strand cable stereo plugged into a single terminal with the bridge across to the other.

Bi-wire cable plugged into both terminals

Single strand plugged into a terminal and then looped into the next instead of using the bridge.

Any advice greatly appreciated.
 
Hi,

The bridge is only there if you are not going to be bi-wiring your speakers. If you bi-wire them you remove the bridge. Also you have to make sure that your amp is bi-wireable also.

Personally i find that silver cable is better for the highs/mids, and copper better for the lows. Therefor i have mine bi-wired with two different types of cable which give me the best sound in my opinion.
 
Pointless, save your money and run one pair, using the bridge as you noted.

Bi-amping on the other hand (one amp for bass, one for top end), is something worth saving your money for :)
 
You will get people come in and comment on the pro's of bi-wiring, but in terms of £/performance it's rarely worth it, and is more of an eventual upgrade than something worth doing on a first system. Choose some nice cable, wire it normally and enjoy :)
 
Yup, only biwire if you're bi-amping.

Most, if not all integrated amps that have 2 sets of outputs per channel have the connectors commoned up within the amp anyway. You could say it's worse to biwire when this is the case as the amp is having to 'drive' twice the amount of cable versus single wiring.

I never use the binding 'straps', but a short section of the cable I'm using from the amp.
 
In theory twice the wires will have slightly less resistance, so you may lose less power in the cables... I wouldn't really recommend you biwire unless you are running a high power system with low impedance speakers. :)
 
Agreed with above - biwiring will only work if you're bi-amping and/or using active crossovers.

Personally i find that silver cable is better for the highs/mids, and copper better for the lows. Therefor i have mine bi-wired with two different types of cable which give me the best sound in my opinion.
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Exactly the same signal is travelling down the wires to the speaker and then being filtered by passive crossovers inside the speaker...
 
I bi-wire my setup, and in a blind test much preferred it that way. Try it and see what you think (and as mentioned above, remove the bridges).

The combinations I tried were:

Single run of cable with bridges
Single run of cable using the cable to bridge as well.
Bi-wiring.

I noticed enough of a difference that when I moved house and forgot to bi-wire the speakers, I spent a good couple of hours trying to work out why it sounded so poor, eventually finding the sound I liked by remembering to re-bi-wire.

Also please remember I am an avid fan of blind tests, and use this method for pretty much any change I make, and don't really care about the fact that technically it shouldn't make much if any difference.
 
Bi amp & Bi- Wire man here.

Only the former gives a truly noticeable difference.
 
Run a single length of cable, but replace the bridge with a piece of the same speaker wire..... 80% of the improvement, 1% of the cost !
 
Abyss said:
I bi-wire my setup, and in a blind test much preferred it that way. Try it and see what you think (and as mentioned above, remove the bridges).

The combinations I tried were:

Single run of cable with bridges
Single run of cable using the cable to bridge as well.
Bi-wiring.

I noticed enough of a difference that when I moved house and forgot to bi-wire the speakers, I spent a good couple of hours trying to work out why it sounded so poor, eventually finding the sound I liked by remembering to re-bi-wire.

Also please remember I am an avid fan of blind tests, and use this method for pretty much any change I make, and don't really care about the fact that technically it shouldn't make much if any difference.
Click to expand...

Can you come up with a physical explanation for the difference you hear?
 
If you can afford to bi-wire, by a pair of speaker cables costing twice the amount per/m. That's likely to be more cost effective.
 
It's really more to do with the way the passive crossover inside the speaker works. Using bi-wire, the return currents from each speaker (bass and treble) are carried by seperate conductors back to the amplifier. The result is a setup closer to the ideal "star grounding" arrangement. Without this, the return currents can modulate the ground point and hence each other by way of the resistance of the connecting cable. Is this noticeable? Very unlikely, I don't bother myself. An active setup is far superior by avoiding this and many other problems attributed to passive crossovers, and this is what I am building currently :)
 
MikeHunt79 said:
Lower resistance?
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You could use fatter wires if it was just this.

Dr.EM said:
It's really more to do with the way the passive crossover inside the speaker works. Using bi-wire, the return currents from each speaker (bass and treble) are carried by seperate conductors back to the amplifier. The result is a setup closer to the ideal "star grounding" arrangement. Without this, the return currents can modulate the ground point and hence each other by way of the resistance of the connecting cable. Is this noticeable? Very unlikely, I don't bother myself. An active setup is far superior by avoiding this and many other problems attributed to passive crossovers, and this is what I am building currently :)
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Cool. I'd love to build a setup with multiple monoblock amps and some active crossovers. 6 monoblock amps might be overkill, but it would be interesting. 2 for each channel for the low frequencies, 2 for each channel for the mids and then 2 for each channel for the highs. :o Or at least three separate stereo amps for the low, mids, highs.
 
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daz said:
for each channel for the mids and then 2 for each channel for the highs. :o Or at least three separate stereo amps for the low, mids, highs.
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I have a simular setup, except I run 2 stereo amps that are bi-wired, low & high respectively.

I had the option to run another stereo amp for the mids, but it'd cost me a fair whack more, so I never did :(
 
I am planning 3 way active with 3 stereo amps, but when I say building I literally mean it. Every resistor, every transistor etc soldered by me :eek:. One amp down, 2 to go! Speakers being made by me too. I'll be sure to sure to show you when (if) it's finished :)
 
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