To bi-wire or not to bi-wire?

If you bi-wire now and do not know if there are any benefits, why bother?

Kal

In my experience the 804s do sound better biwired.

There is no simple answer as the whole question of bi wiring is highly controversial. My own advice is to go for one really good pair, like Cardas GRs or GCs or equivalent and a pair of jumpers. If you do bi wire I would go with the dedicated bi wire cables [ one set of connectors on one end and two on the other] rather than 2 different sets. I have bi wired , bi amped and whatever and found that results vary with equipment and your taste.

run jumpers with you current wires and see if you hear more clarity with the bi-wire. I do with my Alon speakers.

Try bi-wire and single wire with the cable you have now and see if you hear an improvement.

As with most things in audio, you just have to try it.

Bi-wiring makes no difference at all, unless you're using cables with a gauge of wire too small for the length and speaker impedance.

Bi-wiring makes no difference at all, unless you're using cables with a gauge of wire too small for the length and speaker impedance.
Irvrobinson (Answers)

Simply not true.

The answer depends on the particular speaker and the crossover design.

It does't take golden ears to hear the difference between bi-wiring and single wiring (with jumpers) on a pair of speakers designed for bi-wiring.

Agreed, It has to do with the crossover and not all speakers with two sets of binding posts are designed for bi-wiring. However, I believe your B&W 804 Nautilus do benefit from bi-wiring.

>>04-02-10: Irvrobinson
Bi-wiring makes no difference at all, unless you're using cables with a gauge of wire too small for the length and speaker impedance<<

April Fool's right?

>>04-02-10: Irvrobinson
Bi-wiring makes no difference at all, unless you're using cables with a gauge of wire too small for the length and speaker impedance<<

Note the date. True every day except, perhaps, April 1.

Kal

bi-wire

I once owned Silverline Sonata III loudspeakers, which Alan Yun the owner of Silverline, adamantly stated were designed to be bi-wired and sounded best bi-wired. I bi-wired them for a year or so, until I decided to try some new cabling. For the new cabling, I ordered a bi-wire pair, and a single wire pair with matching jumpers.

I preferred the single wire connection. To me, the sound had better focus, and the speakers disappeared better, so I kept the single wire pair and returned the bi-wire pair.

The point being that even on speakers designed for bi-wiring, it pays to try both methods with the same cabling and decide for yourself which method sounds best.

I use double bi-wire speaker cables as short as possible. It just sounds more complete and whole using 2 sets of speaker wires 2 feet long.