Is there a measured benefit to biwiring?

[Arneson]

Obviously you haven't reached nearly the level But keep going young fella, you'll grow up to be big, strong and broke like us some day.

So I'm now like Little Grasshopper here, oh great!

I am non divorced and an admitted dabler only. Ha haha.

[fauzigarib]

Let me get this straight...

We're talking about biwiring here, right? Which means the same amp to both HF and LF posts, correct? For simplicities sake, let's assume we're using one 2-channel amp with 2 PAIRS of output posts. So are we talking about putting one set of terminals to the LF of each speaker and one to the HF of each speaker?

My question (and I think that this is what KAL is trying to get at) is this: WHY?!?! Electrically speaking, whehter you put a jumper on the speaker terminals or connect 2 cables from the same amp, there is ABSOLUTELY no difference.

No matter how gorgeous the speakers look, they are still very simple (well, in the case of the 800's, not so simple) circuits, where current flows are still according the laws of physics.

Yes, but the crossover outside the speaker, connect two different amps to it, fine... I can see someone hearing a difference there, because there IS a difference. Though why someone would want to bypass a piece of art like the 800 series crossovers is beyond me... Whatever floats your boat!

So, am I missing something in this analysis?

Fauzi

[Kal Rubinson]

Are you surmising or is this what your source said?

I am surmising this. His statement is as I indicated above: There was no technical reaon for bi-wiring terminals, just marketing.

My source has led me to believe it was for measurement purposes.

When there's a relevant measurement, let me know.

Kal

[misterdoggy]

Although it came from a presumably reliable source, it is still bull$hit.

Let me add that a presumably reliable source from B&W told me that they put the biwiring terminals on and the notes about it in the manual only to accommodate their dealers and the whims of audiophiles. I promised not to divulge that source for obvious reasons.

Choose your source.

Kal

Kal,

As I said, I can tell no difference with or without biwiring.

However, my source, who I can't divulge either, works in the tech dept at B&W UK and I will ask again on monday when they are open what exactly was the term used when talking about feedback that could come over a short distancce and not the long run to the amplifier.

By the way. The Tech's at B&W actively READ all the threads on this B&W group. I know, because everytime we are talking they say something like, "yeah I saw that, it made me laugh".

What I find interesting is that the new Amps coming to me, the Mark Levinson 436 2 x 350watts Mono's have only 1 post for each speaker.

This has to be interpreted that at ML they don't provide bi-posts because they don't think its necessary.

However, B&W DOES provide bi posts, for a reason and one could say there are benefits, maybe not audible to biwring, besides the possibility to bi-amp like Abbey road does. If the posts weren't there, then bi-amping would not be possible.

[jim777]

Hi there B&W techs :later:

[Race Car Driver]

How about a measurable resistance in the speaker wire, gotta be lower with the now bigger gauge wire no?
[/stirs pot]

[Jesse111]

How about a measurable resistance in the speaker wire, gotta be lower with the now bigger gauge wire no?
[/stirs pot]

I've always seen that as a "maybe" benefit. That is one of the reasons I biwire. But is it audible? To my ears, I would pretty much guarentee I could in no way tell the difference in a biwire system and single. So why do I biwire? Because it looks cool and it gives me and my friends something to talk about. I personally wouldn't invest a lot of money in wires so it's no real expense for me. But on the outside chance that there is any possible benefit...I know I'm getting it. Biwiring is just fun to me. I've never really taken it that serious.

[Race Car Driver]

What about if you want to push 1000 watts through your single ended wire?

Wouldnt it be safer to push that much power through thicker wire (bi wire?!)

Again, just playing devils advocate so to speak. Looking to find the what if..

[Jesse111]

What about if you want to push 1000 watts through your single ended wire?

Wouldnt it be safer to push that much power through thicker wire (bi wire?!)

Again, just playing devils advocate so to speak. Looking to find the what if..

That has been my point twice on this thread. It's a gauge thing if nothing else.

[Kal Rubinson]

However, my source, who I can't divulge either, works in the tech dept at B&W UK and I will ask again on monday when they are open what exactly was the term used when talking about feedback that could come over a short distancce and not the long run to the amplifier.

I eagerly await his clarification.

However, B&W DOES provide bi posts, for a reason and one could say there are benefits, maybe not audible to biwring, besides the possibility to bi-amp like Abbey road does. If the posts weren't there, then bi-amping would not be possible.

Yes. We agree that there is a reason. The exact nature of that reason is what we are disputing. (With thanks to GBS.)

Kal

[Kal Rubinson]

That has been my point twice on this thread. It's a gauge thing if nothing else.

Same as with passive bi-amping. If the one is inadequate, then two is better. However, if the one is adequate to the task, then two is superfluous.

Kal

[Jesse111]

Same as with passive bi-amping. If the one is inadequate, then two is better. However, if the one is adequate to the task, then two is superfluous.

Kal

Agreed.

It appears to be a simple matter of common sense once its understood clearly.

[RebelMan]

I am surmising this. His statement is as I indicated above: There was no technical reaon for bi-wiring terminals, just marketing.

I thought so. Perhaps your source is somewhat disconnected with the rest of B&W? They went to a lot of trouble to technically justify (just) a marketing reason. Bi-wiring and bi-amping. Curious, did you bi-wire your Revel's?

[Kal Rubinson]

I thought so. Perhaps your source is somewhat disconnected with the rest of B&W? They went to a lot of trouble to technically justify (just) a marketing reason. Bi-wiring and bi-amping.

Not much trouble to write that relatively unoriginal statement which fails to give any reference to real-world measurements. In fact, it probably was written by a marketing department. As for the 'disconnection' of my source, I doubt it. He sits near the top of the food chain.

Curious, did you bi-wire your probably Revel's?

Sometimes.

Kal

[dknightd]

Currently I have my b&W speakers biwired. I could not tell the difference in sound,
so didn't go to the trouble of making them single wired again.

In *theory* there is an advantage to biwiring. As somebody above pointed out, one of the reasons people cite for using biwiring is the potential problem due to "back emf" from one driver affecting another driver. When a speaker driver moves it can generate an electrical signal (much like a microphone does). Lets consider a possible situation. B&W recommends using a speaker wire with less than .1 ohm resistance. So, lets assume the speaker wire has .1 ohm resistance. We like to use amps with high damping factor, lets assume an 8 ohm speaker being used with an amp that has an 800 damping factor - i.e. the internal resistance of the amp is .01 ohm (as an aside note that any benefit of having extemely high damping factor for the amplifier is partially canceled by having to use speaker wires). Lets assume the bridging plate between LF and HF terminals of the speaker has resistance .01 ohm. In a biwire arrangement the back emf from one driver has to flow through the .1 ohm speaker wire, which reduces its amplitude, then most of it gets absorbed by the amp since it has much lower resistance than the wire to the other drivers (and of course the other drivers themselves). With a bridging plate the back emf from one driver is just .01 ohm and a crossover away from the other driver. So, more of that back emf will reach the other driver in a single wire configuration than in a biwire configuration. There are a couple of obvious weaknesses to this arguement; one is that back emf is very small to begin with compared to the amplifier signal. Another is that the resistance of the other driver is larger than the speaker wire so most of the back emf will go back to the amplifier anyway. But the fact remains, that in a biwire arrangement less of the back emf from one driver will reach the other drivers in the speaker (although this difference will be very small, sometimes, perhaps, small is enough).

Another argument sometimes made is that the voltage drop across the speaker wire due to large currents needed to drive a woofer will impact the sound of the midrange/tweeter. 20 amps flowing through .1 ohm speaker wire does result in a voltage drop of 2 volts - not huge, but easy to measure. Of course, a voltage drop at 40 hz (for example) should not effect the midrange/tweeter at all. But what about at the frequency near the crossover? Lets say the woofer crosses over to the midrange at 350 hz. At this frequency both drivers make sound and use energy. Perhaps voltage drop near the crossover frequency could effect one driver or the other. For example, lets say the amp was pushing 10 amps at 350 hz - the voltage drop across a single .1 ohm wire would be 1 volt, now instead if we biwire, and assume that half the current goes down one wire and half down the other wire, there is only a .5 volt drop. (of course if we just used both wires together the total drop would still be only .5 volts since the resistance of the doubled up wires would be half of a single wire - but maybe, just maybe, there could be some strange interaction between drivers at the crossover frequency that gave an advantage to a biwire arrangement - it is not completely impossible. . .)

To say that biwiring is EXACTLY the same as running a single wire then bridging the speaker terminals is just WRONG! If wires had zero resistance they would be exactly the same, but alas, all wire has some resistance. While I haven't tried it I am absolutely positive that if I hooked up a scope to each end of a speaker wire I could measure a voltage across that wire. I am also positive that if measured the voltage drop across a biwired speaker, each wire would measure a different voltage drop. What I'm not positive about is if the difference between the voltage drop across a single wire would be measurably different than the sum of the voltage drops across a biwired pair. There would be a difference, but I'm not sure how easily it could be measured - I guess it would depend on the sensitivity of your equipment, I'm sure it could be measured if somebody really wanted to try.

So why did I even bother trying biwiring? Well after 20 years my old speaker wire was getting somewhat corroded. Though I could (and did) clean it up, since I had just got new speakers and amp I decided what the heck I'll get some new wire as well. My wire of choice was canare 4s11 - it is relatively cheap, well made, and has decent gauge. It also has 4 conductors so trying out biwiring is simple. I'd read some things saying biwiring was better, and others saying it made no difference. I figured I try it for myself. I could not tell the difference between single and biwire, but, since I tried single wire first I just left it biwired. . .

I think maybe some people hear a difference between cables just because they went from an old partially corroded connection to a nice new clean conection (probably not a big deal at speaker voltages, but, certainly could be at phono cartiridge levels)

Perhaps Kal can have his measuring guy at sterophile see if a difference can be measured. Perhaps he has already tried and determined the difference is small and hopefully negligiable, perhaps he is afraid to try for reasons unknown.

There are people who think speakers wires sound different. I can see in this case that those people would want to select a wire that does "better in bass" for the bass driver, and a wire that does "better in midrange/HF" for those drivers. Once I thought I heard a difference in speaker wires, but, when I went back to try again I could not pick it out again - perhaps just switching wires (and at least partially cleaning the connection) made the difference, or maybe I'm just half deaf (wait I'm almost 50, have been listening to music for more than 40 years, so might actually be half deaf - tho last time I had it check I was normal for my age, there is no doubt that I do not hear some high frequencies I used to hear, which is normal)

It is ironic and unfortunate that by the time you can afford fast cars and great stereos, that your reaction times have gone down, and your hearing has degraded, so you cannot really enjoy either to there full potential . . . But I can still enjoy both to my full potential which is good enough I suppose.

I hope there are no horrible typos in the above, way too long, post. I don't want to
check, have to move on.

[misterdoggy]

dknight,

That was a great post. This may have been the same thing I heard at B&W UK and just didn't register EMF.

I like what you said about at 50 affording fast cars, stereos etc but you left out fast women. too. Full potential goes down a notch in that area too ..

[dknightd]

Hi Mister,
Glad you appreciated it.
I actually left women out on purpose, for two reasons. First I don't think you should buy a woman, so affordability is a moot point. Second, with age comes experience and control, which can make things better for both partners. YMMV

[Kal Rubinson]

Currently I have my b&W speakers biwired. I could not tell the difference in sound, so didn't go to the trouble of making them single wired again.

Same here.

To say that biwiring is EXACTLY the same as running a single wire then bridging the speaker terminals is just WRONG!

Right. There are measureable differences between a 6foot speaker wire and an 8foot wire of the same construction. That does not mean that the differences are significant, electrically or audibly.

I think maybe some people hear a difference between cables just because they went from an old partially corroded connection to a nice new clean conection (probably not a big deal at speaker voltages, but, certainly could be at phono cartiridge levels)

Uh huh.

Perhaps Kal can have his measuring guy at sterophile see if a difference can be measured. Perhaps he has already tried and determined the difference is small and hopefully negligiable, perhaps he is afraid to try for reasons unknown.

Dunno but he is as acutely aware of the apparent contention as we are.

There are people who think speakers wires sound different.

I think it is encumbent on these people to do the reliable experiments. After all, I support the null hypothesis.

I hope there are no horrible typos in the above, way too long, post. I don't want to check, have to move on.

Nope. You raise the reasonable and well-known issues which, I think, all acknowledge. The remaining issue, of course, is proving something.

Kal

[RebelMan]

Many respectable loudspeaker manufacturers like B&W provide multiple binding posts for the purposes of bi-wiring while others don’t, but why? Let’s assume for the moment that bi-wiring offers no audible benefits and companies like B&W do so only for marketing purposes, but for whose benefit? It would seem that most enthusiasts would be pretty well informed and astute enough to realize that bi-wiring is (assumably) superfluous. Other listeners simply would not be interested in the additional expense or they are completely unaware of what it means to bi-wire, at least until the salesman mentions something or the consumer learns about it in the manual and then becomes curious which leads them to places like this.

If marketing reasons are the “only” driving force behind bi-wiring then to whom are they marketing to? Enthusiasts know better, right??? It’s rather interesting that most if not all the audiophiles that posted to this thread, even the most respected ones (e-hem Kal) acknowledged that they can here no differences in bi-wring yet they continue to do it. I will conceed that I would probably be hard pressed to distinguish the differences with absolute certainty too, although I believe I can detect some improvements with some equipment. Even if I am just kidding myself I certainly don’t want to take any chances and potentially sacrifice some performance by choosing not to bi-wire. My guess is that most people, including those that choose to hide under the guise of inconvenience, feel the same way. Is there a measured benefit to bi-wiring? If you are using your ears I would say that’s up to you. If you are gauging it by the people here that do, ABSOLUTELY!

[PavelL]

As long as consumers - hi-fi enthusiasts that is - believe that biwiring works then speaker companies /if profit is what those companies are after.../ must cater to them with the right product. Hence 2 pairs of binding posts. In this sence it is pure marketing. Audiophiles are free to believe in whatever they please as long as they keep on buying :W B&W or any other company are about SELLING and making a profit. And not about debunking any myths. Biwiring lets the industry sell more cable... and more amps too. If you are from the passive biamp camp - B&W is ready to offer you Classe and Rotel. Now there are even Abbey Road cables for you to buy

P.S. I'm in no way trying to demonize hifi manufacturers. After all hi-fi is a hobby for most of us - we play with our toys :W So let us kids play - all is fine as long as we do not cry.

[Jesse111]

It would seem that most enthusiasts would be pretty well informed and astute enough to realize that bi-wiring is (assumably) superfluous. Enthusiasts know better, right??? It’s rather interesting that most if not all the audiophiles that posted to this thread, even the most respected ones (e-hem Kal) acknowledged that they can here no differences in bi-wring yet they continue to do it.

I'd have to say that the enthusiast community is one of the most gullable communities on earth. I admit I biwire for the fun of it with very inexpesnive cables. Perhaps there's a slight gauge adavantage with big amps for easier amp operation. But as for anyone ever displaying any measure of success in a blind test, including mystelf? I don't believe it for a second.

Just as there's no science or blind test evidence to prove lifting speaker wires of the floor (which brings a bit of a chuckle to me). Vibration pucks and jars of rocks that I've seen on high end equipment is astoundingly gullable. Some use a measure of common sense but this hobby is packed full of gullable money bags. High end expensive cables look really cool. Some folks like to bragg on owning them. My personal opinion is that expensive cables are the best marketing gimmick since the cure all snake oil elixer. Can anyone hear the difference from one high end component rack to the next? Oh c'mon, no way.

There is no science to prove any of those claims and blind tests simply embarass those who make such claims. That's why you don't ever, ever read about blind test results. Why? I'm sure there's a number of reasons certain individuals may claim to have but I suspect it's because blind testing simply proves too much truth. Then where would our wonderful hobby be? On the rare one or two controlled blind tests that I've read about. The results were just as you'd expect. No one could tell between Zip cord and 2K cable.

http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/audioprinciples/interconnects/truthcablesinterconnects.php

Some folks just hear what they want to hear. Hey, that's ok. Nothing in the world wrong with that. It's a hobby. If it's fun for you then go for it. It's all good. I've got at least $4,000 worth of money in my system that you could take out and I bet I'd never know it. But it's in there and I like looking at it. I enjoy my music more when I "see" my cool toys. But if I can't look you in the eye and guarentee you that I could tell a difference in a blind test, then I will readily admit I'm making that purchase for the fun of it and would never make authoritative claims.

[Lex]

ok, here we go again, this is not a BW topic in general, and it's fixing to head to a flame fest I fear. I'll lock this at end of PAGE 3 regardless. So, wrap it up.

Doug

[dknightd]

ok, here we go again, this is not a BW topic in general, and it's fixing to head to a flame fest I fear. I'll lock this at end of PAGE 3 regardless. So, wrap it up.

Doug

Hi Doug,

I think we were done until you came along. The last post was 08-28-2006, more than 10 days ago.

But now that you have come visit, I'm curious about your opinion. I promise I will not argue, or even discuss this further (unless specifically asked to, even then I'll think twice), I'm just honestly curious about your thoughts. Do you think there is a benifit to biwiring speakers (as opposed to using the same total gauge in a single wire configuration)?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. If you choose not to respond, I'd repect that decision, as I'm sure most others here would.

David