Biwiring: can you really hear the difference?

Responding to Esoxhntr, I was ready to biwire with the Mapleshades at the time I ordered them. Pierre Sprey recommended against it, said they would sound better single-wired. Who am I to argue with the guy who makes and sells them?

Dopogue:

Well, in that case then I guess I wouldn't argue either. Though I might try it anyway just to see:)

To test system compatibilty, I suggest getting some cheap radio shack speaker cable in, say, 12 ga. and 10 ga., then you can explore the the differences of more, fatter wire and actually biwiring. The effect of gauge can have as much of an effect as the separete termination, and the type or quality of termination could have as much an effect as a separate termination. I suggest this as a cheap way to find out while controlling the experiments. And then, If you use this wire, you have a reference to start with to get real wire, as EVERYBODY knows what it sounds like.

Very system dependent. I've tried bi-wiring several times in the past with lesser system but did not notice any improvement.

Recently I converted my bi-wired Harmonic Tech Pro 9's with mono terminations to bi-wired terminations and noticed a decent improvement.

I noticed better imaging, 3-D soundstaging, and more air surrounding the highs.

I agree with Stehno, biwiring is system dependant. I originally tried biwiring about 10 years ago, I liked it and stayed with it for about 9 years. Now I'm back to single wiring, why (?), basically because IMHO it is better to buy a better quality cable than split your cable budget on 2 cables. My speaker cable cost about $800 for a 8 ft pair, there is no way I can afford to double that, and it sounds better than the biwire setup I had before ((2) 8 ft cables that cost about $700). If you need them, there are companies out there that make high quality jumpers.
Your experience may vary, depending on many things, such as room conditions, componants, crossover design and the cables themselves. It's definitely best to try before you buy. Take your cable budget and try one expensive pair vs. 2 runs at half that price and see how it sounds in your system.