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To Bi Wire or not to Bi Wire that is the question?

Just brought home a new pair of KEF R3 bookshelf speakers. This is my first pair of serious speakers. So far I'm pretty happy, but I'm still breaking them in. After listening for a while I decided to research the bi wire option. I did a bunch of reading on the subject, the opinion seems to be 50 /50, so I decided to try it for myself. Immediately I heard a difference, the mid range was more pronounced and the low frequencies were deeper and tighter. I'm not sure about the high frequencies, they were pretty good to begin with.To make sure I wasn't imagining this, I asked my wife to listen, she said it sounded richer (her words). I only used 12 awg wire I had laying around, but if I like this better, I'll invest in some money in more serious cable. I thought I would put this out there and see what other peoples experiences were.
chasda
hifiman5's avatar
hifiman5
1,611 posts
 
@mzkmxcv.   You might want to be a bit cautious using the word, "impossible".  More often than not use of that word leads to fallacy.
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
1,457 posts
 
Not a fair comparison.  To bi-wire, you're using twice the length of cable.  Compare better quality single wire+jumpers that costs the same as the doubled-up bi-wire cable, then decide.
mzkmxcv
558 posts
 
@hifiman5 
 
Don’t have to tread lightly when there are no caveats. Imaging s based on the off-axis response on the two speakers and also on your positioning of the speakers. It is literally impossible to alter the off-axis without also altering the on-axis. Channel separation/isolation is the only aspect which affects imaging, but bi-wiring can’t improve that.
elizabeth
6,726 posts
 
Another point mentioned in the past, and might matter: If you biwire, use two independent cables. Biwiring in one cable negates many benefit. (this was mentioned several times in different threads.A TWEAK. to improve coherence, add a JUMPER to the negative posts. (so you have two cables, one to low from amp, one to high from amp, and then a small (can be thin, size is of no importance) connecting the two speaker negative binding posts. Oddly connecting both plus and minus does not improve it, nor does connecting only the two plus posts.           
When I had the option, biwiring did improve clarity.
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