If my speakers are Bi-Wire should I?
- Thread starter imamosher
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Nov 2006
- Posts
- 2,686
- Location
- Ipswich, Suffolk
No, you don't have to but I do recommend it.
My Mission speakers are bi-wired to my Nad C320 amp and they sound fantastic.
Bi-wiring means one wire will carry the lower frequency sounds and the other will do the higher frequency. Because they are kept seperate the result is a cleaner sound.
My amp isn't top range by any means but I could tell the difference from when the speakers were hooked up with one wire.
By the way, if you do use just one wire, make sure it goes through both terminals on the back of the speaker! There should be 4 altogether, 2 for the "+" connection (low and high frequency) and 2 for the "-" connection (low and high frequency).
My Mission speakers are bi-wired to my Nad C320 amp and they sound fantastic.
Bi-wiring means one wire will carry the lower frequency sounds and the other will do the higher frequency. Because they are kept seperate the result is a cleaner sound.
My amp isn't top range by any means but I could tell the difference from when the speakers were hooked up with one wire.
By the way, if you do use just one wire, make sure it goes through both terminals on the back of the speaker! There should be 4 altogether, 2 for the "+" connection (low and high frequency) and 2 for the "-" connection (low and high frequency).
Last edited:
Just get a short piece of cable to replace the cheapo metal jumpers on the two sets of terminals on the back of your speakers. Then spend the money you would have spent on extra cable on some more music.
Dave
So you don't have to run another length of cable from the amp to the speaker you can simply connect as is in the picture and that is the same thing?
The terminals are currently joined with hte jumpers presumably they are there to perform the same function as the extra wire?
Correct, that's not bi-wiring though. I think it's most useful if you have two separate amps, one to drive the low frequencies and one higher. From the same amp it doesn't seem to make much sense over just using one cable. Perhaps someone will come in the thread an spout some electronic jargon that cable manufacturers would say though. Using a speaker wire to link them should be a bit better than the jumpers, but really I don't know how audible that would actually be.
That will achieve the same effect as bi-wiring at a lower cost and mean less trailing cables etc.
Bi-amping is a much more worthwhile thing to do and would need two runs of cable as well as more than 1 amplifier.
Dave
My amp lets me bi-wire but each wire connects to a separate post on the back of the amp and also on the speakers. The wire that I use has 4 cores for each speaker run (so only 1 cable).
There seems to me to be little point in bi-wiring between the same amp posts (i.e. 2 cores into 1 post).... but my amp uses different posts for high and low frequencies for each speaker.
There seems to me to be little point in bi-wiring between the same amp posts (i.e. 2 cores into 1 post).... but my amp uses different posts for high and low frequencies for each speaker.
Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Nov 2006
- Posts
- 2,686
- Location
- Ipswich, Suffolk
bi-wiring means two wires. not one as in the example given, which isn't bi-wired.
Associate
- Joined
- 19 Dec 2009
- Posts
- 1,409
- Location
- Manchester
Some av amps allow bi-amping aswell, if you can do that, then definatly worth it.
try it if you want but from my experience
- bi-wiring => did nothing noticeable
- bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
- adding power amp and bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
- having 2 monoblocks and bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
- bi-wiring => did nothing noticeable
- bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
- adding power amp and bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
- having 2 monoblocks and bi-amping => did nothing noticeable
My amp (a denon) is one such amp. Basically I have special 4 core cables - though of course two x two core is logically the same (but less tidy) and speakers which are biwirable. I need to setup my amp to be biwired in the config settings so I think it is genuinely doing something differently.
What is the difference between 2 separate amps and distinct channels in a single amp ?... I don't really know. Could be a gimmick but I was led to believe that biwiring my amp to speakers with the 4 core wires was the way to go ...
Caporegime
- Joined
- 8 Jan 2004
- Posts
- 32,772
- Location
- Rutland
Biwiring is a total waste of time and money.
With what amps and set-up, as I would agree Bi wire can be pretty marginal at times, depending on the set-up, the rest suggested you had some thing broken or not switched on !!!
hahaha.I agree with just replacing the links with some speaker cable, 90% of improvement 1% of the cost.
Associate
- Joined
- 19 Dec 2009
- Posts
- 1,409
- Location
- Manchester
If your amp allows that, you can try it. Turn the BI-Amp option on in the settings, use the front speaker terminals to connect the high frequency cable and the surround back terminals to connect the low frequency cable. You should notice an improvement, I definatly did with my amp.
With what amps and set-up, as I would agree Bi wire can be pretty marginal at times, depending on the set-up, the rest suggested you had some thing broken or not switched on !!!
I agree with just replacing the links with some speaker cable, 90% of improvement 1% of the cost.
using a pioneer SC-LX71 AVR connected to a Rotel 1572 stereo power amp and 2 cyrrus monoblocks connected to a whole cyrus system (pre / CD transport / DAC)
Last edited:
Soldato
- Joined
- 28 Jul 2003
- Posts
- 5,801
- Location
- South Wales