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
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"?
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.
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!)
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.