wife's observation

[miner]

I have a Rotel RC-1070 pre and RB-1070 amp which power a pair of B&W804Ns. I recently replace my standard 14 ga speaker wire with 14 ga 4 wire (65 strands/wire OFC) and biwired the 804s. My lovely wife has commented that since the switch the sound level has dimished, meaning it is not as loud at the same volume setting as previously observed with the standard 2 wire speaker cable. Is this possible? i can't really tell a difference since we rarely go past 33% total volume. Thanks guys.

[DrJRapp]

I don't really think that's possible. It's sort of like saying, all things being equal, that a 4 lane highway can handle less traffic than a 2 lane hiway. That is assumeing that your new 14/4 is really 14/4.

The only other possibility is that the crossovers in your speakers react differently to bi-wiring.

[greggz]

I too don't think its possible, but its pretty easy to prove/disprove. Switch back and forth between the two configurations and use a SPL meter to take readings. You could measure using white noise and a couple different frequencies to see if its across the board or specific to the tweeter, midrange or bass.

Now, when I bi-wired, I didn't think the volume changed but I did hear changes. I felt like my bi-wired speakers had less "weight". And while I did feel that the highs got "airier" I also felt like the highs now seemed detached from the mids.

Leaving the speakers bi-wired but putting the jumper back just between NEGATIVE terminals I was able to get the "weight" to return. But I was never able to shake my perception that the highs and mids were detached. In the end I just ended up going back to a single cable.

Now I must disclose that my experience bi-wiring may be atypical. I didn't use a true bi-wire cable. I used a pair of individual cables, one was 14ga and one was 12ga. And the speakers were 40 feet away from the amp. So it was far from an ideal bi-wire arrangement.

[Andrew Pratt]

That doens't make any sense at all. You've doubled the wire so resistance should be lower which should mean more power is getting to the speakers for the same volume marker...but even that's a bit of a stretch given the values we'd be talking about here unless your cables are several miles long

[sprout]

That doens't make any sense at all. You've doubled the wire so resistance should be lower which should mean more power is getting to the speakers for the same volume marker...but even that's a bit of a stretch given the values we'd be talking about here unless your cables are several miles long

How so?

The resistance would only lower if they were in parrallel, and as they are bi-wired that is not the case.

He now has two single runs of cable, so the resistance in effect has doubled!
Only if he joins them again at the speaker end would they be in parallel, then the resistance would half.

BUT the resistance is so low as to be negligable any way

Cheers

sprout

[w6000]

I have a 1098 with the rears bi wired and the fronts and center single wired. I noticed that after I hooked it up this way that I got less sound out of the rear channels when listening to five channel mode. I have not tried to bi wire the whole system, but I do believe you that you are not getting as much sound.