Bi-Wire with two pairs of speaker cables

It is actually best to run two identical pairs of cables when biwiring.  I have been doing that for over 30 years with great success.  Before I had a second pair of output jacks on my power amp. I doubled up the spades.  Just tighten the jacks well so you are getting good contact to both spades.  It will be even better if you have a second pair of jacks added to your amp.

What amp. and speakers do you have?

Yep, that works fine, just don't accidentally short the two terminals.

@hifiman5 

Thanks for chiming in. I appreciate it. This is good news. Any downside?

My speakers are Revel F228be, and Amp is Ayre VX-5 Twenty 

@thyname - I have tried this, but to my ears the only thing that improved the sound was replacing the little mettal strip-jumpers (those generally supplied with bi-wire speaker terminalss) with a quality jumper made from  wire.

Bi amping ia a different approach that can definitely improve sound quality.

One tweak that often improves sound quality with a biwire speaker (using quality wire jumpers) is inserting the +ve wire into the H.F. terminal and the neutral wire into the -ve L.F. terminal. Strange, but effective!

Other that have tried this also reported improvements

One quality wire that I use a lot from Take Five Audio is this one...
https://www.takefiveaudio.com/products/1095-mil-spec-12-awg-silver-plated-copper-cryo-treated-red/


It's a 12 gauge wire, but they also have other gauges available
- e.g. I have used their 16 gauge wire for the +ve jumper and their 12  gauge wire for the neutral jumper with noticeable improvements

Hope that helps - Steve

Interesting concept Steve @williewonka I do have quality jumpers (Cardas Clear, soon to try Crystal Clear Magnum Opus), but you are saying crossing them ? So one jumper from High Frequency Red, to Low Frequency Black? The other one from HF Black to LF Red?

@thyname - nope - you install the jumpers across the red and black terminals as normal (red to red and black to black). But when you connect the actual speaker cable, you conenct the red wire to the HF RED terminal and the black wire to the LF black terminal.

Hope that clarifies things a bit better :-)  

Yes it does ;-) Thank you @w

the only downside to a double run is that for same money as 2 pair  it might sound better to get a better cable with a matching jumper...

One tweak used by folks bi-wiring with two sets of cables, is to connect the two speaker negative posts with a small wire jumper. The wire does not need to be fancy, just a copper wire, maybe as large as 18 gauge. It just seems to keep the two speaker parts coherent. ONLY the negative terminals at the speaker. not the positive ones, not both negative and positive.. just the two negative ones..

I hear you, jl35. The few times I tried biwiring it did make an improvement but nowhere near as much as simply spending the money on upgrading to a better single run cable. I mean it was not even close. That was many years ago, so given how far cables have come I'm sure its the same today only even more lopsided in favor of the one good cable. Has anyone bothered to make that comparison?

External bi-wire if you can with 2-4” of separation in the long runs... the science is the LF field modulates the HF
the field strengydrops dramatically w distance
this is why many internally biwire cables don’t sound better
....

Agree with Tomic.  Forget the internal biwire cables. They defeat the main benefit of biwiring.

Bollocks! When will audiophiles realize that changes they make to their system is specific to their system only?!?!?!

The reason for BiWiring is to stop woofer current from modulating tweeter current.

It is totally permissible to use two different cables.

Each and every combination will have various effects.
Jumping one of the legs at the speaker will sound different on every speaker.
Separating the cables will change the inductance and thus the sound. I like mine interwoven.
There is no need to have dual amp outputs, two spades on one terminal or two leads into one spaded is fine. Adding a second terminal adds additional LCR which may or may not alter the sound depending on the components chosen.

In ALL cases, audibility is program, system and listener dependent.

Ignore fan-boy recommendations, experiment and keep what sounds best to you.

Please see http://ielogical.com/Audio/CableSnakeOil.php/#BiWire for a BiWire analysis.

Bi wiring a tube amp is very effective when you have 0 - 4 - 8 - 16 ohm connections. Use the "4" as "common" and the "0" for woofer, and the "16" for the tweeter. Polarity of the tweeter may have to be reversed. Easy enough.
Now the thinner (usually) 16 ohm wire inside the transformer only carries the tweeter current. Thinner wire has better skin effect properties for higher frequencies too.
The voltage on 0-4 and 4-16 pairs are the same but phase is opposite with 4 as neutral. 8 has lower voltage, which can be OK is the tweeter is "hot" and you want to lower it.
Try it. Nothing bad will happen.

I’m a big proponent of biwiring.  I use homemade silver braid on my lows, limber monocle for my highs and I love it. Cleaner tighter bass, colorful mids, crystalline highs!

FYI: I've used the method with good success that williewonka suggested above. Give it a try...

@thyname

I do not dual wire my speakers ...I tri-wire them, and like others who have posted I use identical cables when tri-wiring. No problems here. My speakers are vintage from the early 1970s - a pair of Pioneer CS-A700's - but the cable is new. Pure copper cable. USA Made. Make certain you label your cable runs. I suggest labels at both ends and in the middle. To my ears tri-wiring is wonderful.
But then, my ears are vintage - just like my rig.
Happy listening.

Thanks everyone for your input!

I decided to order a single run of Crystal Clear Audio Magnum Opus speaker cables, plus the matching jumpers.

http://crystalclearaudio.com/products/magnum-opus/

I will do the trick @williewonka suggested (Red speaker cable to HF speaker binding post, Black speaker cable to LF binding post).

When / If budget allows in the future, I will get s second speaker cable pair, and bi-wire then

Checke to see if your post on your amp will except both spades as well as banana, this way you can order the next set of cables with bananas.

Unfortunately @jb840 it only accepts spades

Bi-amping correctly (with a filter removing the bass from the amp powering the midrange and/or tweeter drivers) requires two pair of cables of course, and some bi-ampers like to use heavy gauge on the woofer, lighter on the m/t’s. Bi-wiring can provide similar (though lesser) improvements, and is what Richard Vandersteen recommends for his loudspeakers. Separating the m/t's from the back-emf sent into the cable from a dynamic woofer is a good thing. Nothing wrong with trying different cables on different drivers. It’s only money ;-) .

I had made a pair of AQ Type 8s into a bi-wire cable and that sounded OK, and then ran into Bill Low at a local audio "salon" and he explained to me why his "Rocket" cables might work much better...I bought a pair of the newer version of the Rocket 33s (4 conductors per bi-wire side of each cable run instead of 3) and yeah, he got it right as they're really 2 runs of the same cable, and sound terrific.