Hi all,
Has anyone bi-wired their speakers. What recomendations.

Does running two set of cables from the same receiver terminal to the Studio 100 and removing the shorting links have any improved effect.
OR is it same as running one cable set and shorting the speaker terminals.

Thanks

I noticed a distinct difference in the mid and bass range when i bi-wired my reference 60's. I tried it both ways and preferred the biwire. I will admit that the quality of the speaker cable helped also. I now use Bettercables.

Irfan,
If your chosen speaker cable manufacturer has different grades of cables.. it's recommended do go ahead and get the better series standard cables than going lesser quality and bi-wiring them. Then again, you had another post asking whether or not cables make a difference....

John

I haven't bi-wired mine yet (Studio 60s), but i did replace the factory gold plates with short (3") runs of decent grade speaker wire.

My plan is to upgrade my existing Transparent speaker wire with some speaker wire designed for bi-wiring, also from Transparent.

-jer

In my opinion there is a tremendous difference in the sound between bi-wired and non-bi-wired setups. I bi-wired my Paradigm Studio 40s when I first got them. After a few weeks, I did some work moving and reorganizing my system, and didn't have enough speaker wire to bi-wire, so I just went ahead an reinstalled the shorting plates.

I couldn't believe how much worse the system sounded. At first I couldn't figure out what the problem was. It was not subtle at all. Finally, I decided to try getting some more cable and bi-wiring again. The great sound came back.

I'm a firm believer in bi-wiring and bi-amping.

Two different things Bi-wiring and Bi-amping. Bi-wiring from the same source, such as a receiver, doesn't take the load off of the receiver, which won't result in a better sound. Bi-wiring as explained above is doing the same thing that the gold plates are, driving both speaker sets off of the same amp source.

Bi-Amping is a different story. Take your source split it two seperate amps then use the bi-amping posts on the speakers. This splits the bass load to a seperate amp, which should result in cleaner and stronger highs and midrange.
This is what was explained to my by both Rotel and Paradigm. Rotel said that I could do two runs off of my 5 channel amp to the speaker, but that it really should be a seperate amp to really bi-amp.

Allen-what kind of amps are you using to bi-amp with? And how are you splitting the source-a RCA y adapter? I was thinking of by a 2 channel amp just for the purpose of bi-amping, but haven't decided if I want to spend the money.

This is from another thread a few months back, about anothe bi-wiring question. I modified it slightly, so past references make sense:


About bi-wiring, there would be no effective crossover differences. Theoretically, this should only have the same effect as doubling up on the wire size,or paralleling wire, although many people say it really helps. As for bi-amping, the reduced loads on the respective amp sections would be beneficial. However, the ideal bi-amping situation would include an active (i.e., in the line-level stage, between pre-amp and amps) crossover, which presents its own caveats:

Although it will void your waranty, the crossover components within the speakers should be bypassed, i.e., wires run directly from cabinet terminals to driver terminals, because:
All amplifiers not only start the driver diaphragms into motion when fed an input signal, but also control and/or stop such motion when the signal changes/stops. This ability is determined by the "source" impedance of the amplifier's output stage, and is typically known as "damping factor". Yes, sources have impedance ratings, just like loads do. Source impedance is the ability of a source to not be affected by the load, which is why a larger power supply (or battery) will drop voltage less than a smaller one with increased load current.
Solid state amps usually have a very low (>1ohm) output impedance, which explains the purpose of the 1ohm resistor in series with the "current source" output of the Sunfure amps, as mentioned in the post by Spiky about biwiring a few months back, in another thread. The increased output impedance lessens the damping factor, thereby imitating the "tube sound" reportedly preferred by tube-amp lovers.

By the way, a speaker cone in motion actually generates an output voltage, just like a dynamic microphone does (dynamic meaning like a dynamo [generator]). The output stage of an amplifier with no input signal will generate an output voltage opposite that fed into it's output terminals in attempt to keep the output terminal at 0 volts. The better the ability of the amp to do this, the greater it's "damping factor".

A pair of amps bridged to run a mono speaker must have each amp (or amp channel) fed the same signal, but in opposite phase (polarity), which effectively doubles the voltage fed to said speaker, because the output of one amp goes positive, while the other output goes negative by the same amount (rather than being simply ground, or 0 volts). Assuming the amps have power supplies capable of providing the current necessary (doubled per each channel), the power seen by the speaker quadruples! (If power = volts x amps, and you double volts accross the same resistance, which doubles amps, then power quadruples).

If you were to take the example given above, and turn down the input to one of the amp channels, or unplug the input cable, but leave the power on, the amp's output would try (within the amp's ability) to remain at 0 volts, rather than float, which it would do with the power turned off. This is another example of an amplifier's source, or output, impedance.

All of which brings me back (finally!) to the point: crossovers are high-pass (to tweeters), low-pass (to woofers), or band-pass (to midranges, if used). The thing to remember is that they work both ways, meaning that a crossover that provides a woofer with only low frequencies (below 500Hz, let's say) also only allow the amplifier to control (dampen) the woofer's motion at those same frequencies, but the amp loses control above the cutoff frequency. The same applies to mids and tweeters, within their respective frequency ranges.

Also, if an active crossover is used ahead of the amp, you wouldn't want the passband control provided by the active crossover to be interfered with by the passive crossover components within the speaker cabinets. (Ask anyone involved in high-end car audio, when using active crossovers and multi-amp setups, if any components are used between amps and their respective drivers). Any number of abhorrent effects could be produced.

Hope this helps without confusing.
Larry

Your absolutly correct, bi-amp and bi-wire are totally different.

Bi-amping is more amps...Bi-wire is more wire from the same amp.

Sorry for not responding earlier Tony. I haven't stopped by for a while.

As other posts have said in the meantime, yes, bi-wiring and bi-amping are quite different.

I am only bi-wiring my Paradigms. Bi-amping would require not only two amplifiers, but also an active crossover between the pre-amp and the amplifiers.

Actually, Allen, if you leave the crossover components in the circuit, which you would unless you went inside the speaker cabinet and wired the drivers directly to the terminals, you don't have to use an active crossover. Each driver would only reproduce it's own frequency range (and only load the amp within that range).

Larry

On 07/30/01 20:55.33, Larry Fine said...

"About bi-wiring, there would be no effective crossover differences. Theoretically, this should only have the same effect as doubling up on the wire size,or paralleling wire, although many people
say it really helps. As for bi-amping, the reduced loads on the respective amp sections would be
beneficial. However, the ideal bi-amping situation
would include an active (i.e., in the line-level stage, between pre-amp and amps) crossover, which presents its own caveats:

Although it will void your waranty, the crossover
components within the speakers should be bypassed ..."

Larry -

That was quite a good explanation of bi-amping. I'd like to add to it. There are a couple of things you said that don't exactly apply in the case of Paradigm speakers. I had to look in my owners manual to refresh my memory about this. In fact, my own previous post is inaccurate.

While it is true that bypassing the internal crossover network in most speakers will void your warranty, that only means it's not OK to do ACTIVE bi-amping. PASSIVE bi-amping is another story.

Paradigm Reference speakers are designed to be bi-wired or bi-amped, having separate binding posts for the woofer and the tweeter. The speakers come with gold-plated shorting plates making a connection between the two sets of posts.

If you remove the shorting plates, you can then bi-wire or do passive bi-amping. In passive bi-amping, two amplifiers are used to drive the speaker, one for the lows and one for the highs, but the internal crossovers in the speakers remain connected.

You said that the benefit of this would be just that the respective amplifier sections would be dealing with decreased loads, but there is more than that.

As you pointed out, there is an interactive relationship between speakers and amps, and the impedances involved vary widely with frequency. What passive bi-amping does is to allow each amplifier/speaker pair to deal with only part of the frequency/impedance range. That is what gives you the increase in clarity, detail, control (especially in the bass), etc.

Bi-wiring speakers that are designed for it (like the Paradigm Reference series) confers some of the same benefits, for the same reasons. Since the high and low pass filters of the internal crossovers are still in the signal path, but not connected to each other, each wire carries only part of the frequency/impedance spectrum. It may be counter-intuitive, but electrical engineers assure me that this is why my speakers really do sound much better with two sets of wires.

I fear that I'm not explaining this well. As you noted, it's difficult to discuss this issue without making it confusing.

Anyway, although I would not have believed it, my Paradigms do sound far better when bi-wired than not. During the time when I only had one set of wires, I was using much higher grade, thicker Monster Cable than I am in the current bi-wired configuration, but this way is still much better.

Larry, that's so funny. You wrote and submitted that reply while I was writing (and re-writing) my previous post.

You are absolutely correct, of course. I had forgotten all about passive bi-amping until I looked at my Paradigm manual.

- Allen

My speakers, the original Definitive Technology BP-2000 system, which includes, of course, the BP-2000 towers, the CLR-2000 center, and the BP-X surrounds, which I'm using as sides, are all bi-wireable, except for the BP-Xs. I'm also using a pair of BP-20s as rears, which are likewise bi-wireable. Actually, one could call the BP-2000s tri-wireable, because there are 3 pairs of binding posts, although the bottom pair (pun intended) feed the low-pass-filtered sub amp input, but, against recommendations of Def Tech, I'm running line-level inputs to the sub amp from my B&K AVP-4090 pre/pro.

I have been so busy at work, I haven't even watched a movie in over a month, not to mention playing with the gear itself, which is actually much more fun to me. I intend to try these various hook-ups in the near future. I will post my impressions here when I have some. :-)

Larry