How goofy is this?


While waiting on jumpers for my new Audience au24e speaker cables i got impatient and figured I'd see how things sound with the au24e's to the high posts with a set of zu ibis to the low.

Granted I may have a tin ear but this seems to sound pretty good. I'm hearing - I think, or imagine - more detail, more air, more 3D, more dynamics, and a lot more bass than I was with my biwire Rockefellers.

Is this setup really whacky? Or is it possible I'm really hearing the improvements and not imagining things?
joncourage
Doesn't register on the goofy scale for me.

Anytime something sounds different, there is a 50/50 chance of it also sounding better versus worse for whatever reason. Those are the only two choices.

Call it audio Karma if you like.
IMHO I think that this is not totally goofy. What you are hearing could be an improvement in sonics. The parallel/shot-gun biwiring does present a different impedance of the speaker to the power amp compared to a single run speaker cable & that alone can be better off for the amplifier. Often manuf will encourage biwiring for their particular speaker models.
What you should do is listening long-term to your music that you are very familiar with. You know what it used to sound like & now you are hearing a new sound. Is the new sound still better few days down the road? 1 week later? 1 month later?
04-17-12: Mapman
Doesn't register on the goofy scale for me.
Same here. I don't see any reason to be surprised.

One suggestion I would make, though, if you haven't already done it, is that you go back and forth a couple of times between the new arrangement and the Rockefellers to confirm that your findings are repeatable. That would rule out the possibility of extraneous variables such as improved contact that might have resulted from scraping away of oxidation when you changed cables, or unrelated things such as changes in AC line noise or voltage.

Regards,
-- Al
I always promote connecting to HF posts and jumping to LF as explained to me by Stuart Marcus (Vampire wire) and in Tannoy speaker manuals.
After listening more I started noticing an edginess in the highs that was becoming very irritating. Thin, grainy, unnatural. Violins sounded artificial and annoying.

Switched the ibis to the high and au24e to the low, and the edginess was resolved, but while there's still better detail and resolution than the audioquest, the sound is very 2-dimensional, flat, uninvolving. Less bass, but what is there is better controlled and a little less boomy so I give it "even" on that count but not ideal.

I'm hoping that when the jumpers finally get here and I switch to single wired that the downsides will resolve and I'll see improvements over the audioquest. If not, back they go in service until I find something that offers better synergy with my system.

Speaker cables so far have been the toughest piece of the puzzle for me.
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