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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
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drubin
3,240 posts
 
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"?
redkiwi
1,092 posts
 
Yes Drubin, they do sound different. In theory, taking the grounds of both drivers back to the amp ought to be superior. But for some reason (the desire to sell more cable perhaps) there is a craze that appears to have begun in the USA to use two runs of speaker cable rather than use an internally bi-wirable cable. This makes for an entirely different "effective" cable than was originally designed. Whether or not it improves things is hit and miss - most probably a miss.
artmaltman OP
769 posts
 
Hey Eldartford, no argument over my being nuts, but you really ought to experiment with jumpering high to low vs low to high. No question that it sounds very different, at least on the speakers I've tried. (It's how much we care about the difference that makes us all nuts!)
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Artmaltman...Sorry but I can't reverse jumpers because my speakers are biwired. Yes, biwired, something that I never thought worthwhile. But in that case I had actually come up with a theoretical reason why it might make a difference (return wire impedance) and besides, the extra copper can't hurt.
Can you offer any technical explanation for your jumper observations?
By the way, I still don't think that biwire has any audible effect, in spite of the theoretical effect that I identified.
artmaltman OP
769 posts
 
On my speakers, biwiring sounded extremely different tonally than jumpering low to high. Others noticed this too. However, it sounded very similar tonally to jumpering high to low, with the single wire sounding more focused, and the biwire seeming to flow a bit more freely in the bass. The difference between this latter two was small enough that I decided to stick with single wire jumpering high to low.

My results testing with my old Spendor FL9's were very different though and I preferred biwire at that time (AP Oval 9's).

On the Audience site there is a pointer to a discussion that suggests that the sonic "benefits" due to biwiring are really a form of phase incoherence (I think I got that right) rather than an actual improvement in accuracy; even that it might sound more exciting it's allegedly less accurate.

So what do we do, select the one we like that sounds better or the more theoretically correct one?

As for technical explanations, I'm the wrong person. I do work hard to make my own observations before comparing notes with others, so as to avoid being influenced.

And I am very happy with AU24, single wire, jumpered high to low.

Art
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