Do not use stock jumpers


I've been using biwire Cardas Golden Ref with my Silverline Sonatina II's for some time now and very happy. Recently out of curiousity I've been trying Audience AU24, single wire, but I did not have the jumper so I was using the speaker's stock jumper. It sounded great, very refined and focused with great bass, but perhaps a bit weak in the lower mids.

Last night my banana-terminated AU24 jumpers arrived and I plugged them in after doing some testing with the stock jumpers. WOW. The sound is practically unrecognizable. Fully fleshed out lower mids and far bigger soundstage, more bounce (it had not been short of bounce), just awesome.

I had NOT been feeling that jumpers would make that big a difference. Heck, I did not feel that there was that big a difference to make.

Several years ago when I had Spendor FL9's I remember now experimenting with jumpers and feeling that it also made a big difference. (I had forgotton about this since I'd been biwiring so long.)

Anyway, Audience AU24 speaker cables with AU24 jumpers is stunning combination.

And, well, even that those stock jumper look so beautiful, I remain shocked at how much sound they were holding back. I still can't figure how a piece of metal or cable that short can make such a huge difference.

If you are thinking about experimenting with upgraded jumpers, I say, stop thinking and do it. (and no, I don't have any connection to anyone selling jumpers, or Audience cables! If there are people out there getting rich selling jumpers, I sure don't know them..).

This is just a heads-up from a fellow hobbiest. My experience leads me to believe that it is well worthwhile to experiment with replacing the stock jumpers, because the stock jumpers might be holding you back a lot more than you think.

Art
artmaltman
I do agree with the method and your theory stated. It's not a matter of how cheap and easy the modification can be done. Trust me, it will end up costing more then you think. The speakers will loose value because you pop the posts open without letting the manufacturer do the job. Good for all of you who has the technique doing the mod and again, no doubt the above suggest method is the ultimate to go (ultimate way to go is to take off the spades on your speaker cable and solder them DIRECTLY onto the crossover... C'on , there is always a better way...) but as most of the audiophiles who are not handy (about 85% of them) Getting a set of quality jumpers are the way to go and it certainly for 100% will provide a certain degree of improvement. This post is for discussing upgrading from stock jumpers to the user's newly bought Audience jumper, not anything beyond that. We are a little bit off the topic here. Why don't we start a new thread to discuss the con / pro of the above mod? Shall we?
Fine by me, but just one point, I had the local importer do the mod and he stands behind the warranty. It just makes sense.
OK, one more thing. I'm getting better results jumpering my Silverline Sonatina II's from high to low, rather than from low to high. This is the opposite of the results I got when jumpering my Spendor FL9's. Go figure.
Artmaltman...I went and figured. You're nuts!
No offense...in one way or another, we all are :)
Redkiwi, that experiment you suggest is interesting. The other experiment, a little less pure, is comparing bi-wiring to single-wiring. There we may also hear a difference, but in this instance, which way is causing the "damage"?