After 45 years in audio as a sideline doing repairs and installation, my knowledge is purely experimental. I have been convinced about cable differences over the years, but have reduced my expenditure by following a few basics. Cable must be adequately designed for the purpose- high current demands require substantial copper of 10ga when running more than 2 metres, and lower current requirements require good control of capacitance and induction parameters. Only when the amp speaker interface is under pressure, low impedances, or swinging phase where large induction variables effectively lower load impedance does it become necessary to spend for more copper. Buying an amplifier that has greater current capabilities is probably a better investment. Good connections are vital, have replaced the cheap banana connections on my speakers with gold plate copper bus bar to allow bolt up, much more reliable!
I was using a fms zero set of cables and everything sounded great. My audio dealer was then telling me that fms was making a diode cable to be used with the zero for bi wiring. The zero on the low and the diode on the top. I purchased a pair of diodes same length as the zeros. I could not believe how much of a positive change in the sound!
I'm happy with my 16 gauge and 14 gauge speaker cable (not very long runs). I have never bi-wired. Those are some really nice looking cables you have there.
Hey, have you tried this simple experiment - put the two speakers close together, wire up one with zipcord, the other with your best cable, play mono and switch between only left or only right. If the differences are that huge they should be even more immediately hugely obvious in such direct comparison. You’ll be able to compare cables properly this way, audio memory being short as is.
I waited for 10 minutes to see what you felt the impact on sound was, but you took over 10 minutes to define bi wiring. It is the practice of running two separate conductors from each channel of the amp to each of the low vs high stages of the speakers. In my experience it makes a noticeable difference in sound. I concluded that I do not prefer the biwire sound. To me it is artificial and results in a less integrated sound. But that's with my speakers in my room so its worth trying but you may or may not like it. With some speakers you may see no change at all.
I'm not surprised at your conclusion. When there's an audible difference in a speaker's sound when bi-wired the most likely cause is the reduction in possible interaction between the low and high crossover/driver sections within the crossover band. With bi-wiring they are electrically isolated, to the degree allowed by the amplifier's damping factor. We'd hope that the speaker has been developed to sound its best in the standard configuration when whatever degree of interaction there is can occur as both crossover inputs are connected directly together. If it does sound better when this interaction is greatly attenuated by bi-wiring, we could wonder whether the speaker crossovers could have been better designed, or if in fact the design was rather strangely optimized for bi-wire configuration. You'd think if this ever happened the speaker developer would say so.
@@PlatypusPerspective I have to challenge your statement "With bi-wiring they are electrically isolated, to the degree allowed by the amplifier's damping factor". The circuit is unchanged by biwiring. Both wires terminate at the speaker post. The difference could only be due to the properties of the wires connecting each driver. If you have a wire that works well with the low range but not the higher octaves and another that favors the highs, then bi wiring can sound good. A high gauge wire may attenuate high frequencies. A finer gauge silver wire may be delightful on the highs.
@@user-od9iz9cv1w Hey W! I was aware that I'm raising an issue that almost nobody in the online community makes allowance for - in fact I'm pondering whether I should try my hand for the first time at a RU-vid presentation to illustrate the differences to circuit operation when you bi-wire. I haven't seen the topic actually explained in any other channels, it's usually just expressed as the circuit being the same, and I've seen one well-known guru become dismissive and rather rude towards someone (not me) who was referring to the fact that there are differences. One of course is the properties of the wires themselves as you say, and one consideration is the fact that there are now two cables connected to the amplifier, with their characteristic distributed capacitance and inductance therefore changed, possibly doubled, which can affect the behavior of some amplifiers. However the difference I'm referring to (separation/isolation of the two speaker circuits) is most easily seen by considering the earth/ground side return path. With a single cable, there is a common return path from the single common negative speaker connection to the amplifier negative terminal (which is signal ground if the amplifier is not bridged). The signal current passing through both low frequency and high frequency sections of the crossover/drivers returns as a composite current along this common wire. As inevitably happens with a common earth path, the small voltage developed across the wire resistance means that each section instead of returning to a clean earth potential, also sees the small potential created by the other section's return current. This is of course the mechanism which can result in hum or noise injection into amplifier circuits which have a common earth path. In contrast, when the two speaker sections are separated and two wires run, the return currents of each section travel in their own wire to the earth point, it has changed from a common rail to a star earthing topology. So the circuit is not unchanged. Each section is now isolated from any effect of the return current from the other section (except for any random parasitic coupling) - in a star earthing topology, different earth returns are unaffected by each other. The same principle applies to the signal output path from the amplifier to the speaker, but with the added factor that the amplifier output has a small equivalent series impedance, which defines the amplifier's damping factor. This limits how much isolation can occur between the input side low and high frequency sections, in proportion to the ratio of the impedance in the signal path, to that of the amplifier output impedance. However the low and high frequency crossover/driver sections are interacting differently with both the earthing and the signal output of the amplifier when bi-wired, compared to single common wired. These differences are easier to visualize using equivalent circuit schematics than they are to explain in words, since you can see how the circuit and the current paths differ between the two configurations. It's another question how much audible difference this can make. But I hope I've provided sufficient explanation of the difference in circuit behavior, anything further I'm happy to respond (within reason, heh heh).
Chase IACS not expensive brass connectors. Not the cable but connectors making most the difference. Tellurium copper connectors 90% conductivity vs brass 15 to 30% conductivity.
I've just bought a set of Chineese gold plated brass binding posts that are copies of Pomona/Mueller binding posts. And to my surprise the LCR meter (DE-5000 by DER EE) shows resistance 0.000 Ohms from one end of the binding post to another.
You can glue all the connects you want on your fancy wires ,all I want is to know is how to get santa and and the fancy cable ferry to set a pair of Moab under my tree
Man look at all those high frequency point sources...Does anyone understand what Phase Coherence is these days? Sure you can get patent for multi drivers in a circle, but you can also get a patent for a fancy fly swatter. Anyone can obtain a patent, doesn't mean it will work well. A good two way or a concentric driver will out image any Tekton! I guess all those BBC engineers got it wrong back in the 60's and 70's when they designed the best transducers in the World. The entire British Speaker industry is built upon BBC research, guess they are wrong too. In the US the more the merrier and bigger is better works for eveything. They say that Tekton's sound like a concert, more like live music. Loud is King if you are in a stage band with a drummer and stuff, Tektons are highly efficient, and they do play very loud. If Kevin put a pair of Proacs or Harbeths in his room, I think he would hear a lot of new sounds. Kevin, I think that you might even have a religious experience because your front end equipment looks amazing. Don't even get me going about speaker cables. BTW I was in the business and have been into High End Audio for over forty years and my opinion won't get me a cup of coffee .
Steve Jones pulled me from the depths of hell after I bought the Double Impacts and set me up with an entire incredible system. My speakers were cheaper than the Tektons, 20 years old and smoked the Tektons. They were loud and nothing else, nothing.
Hi Kevin. This is exactly what I find works best in my system. I use Audioquest solid core hyperlitz on the HF and Cable Talk stranded cables on the LF. This seems to give the best combination and much higher sound quality than just using one or the other plus jumpers. Maybe there are cables out there that are great for both HF and LF, but this solution seems to work brilliantly for me.
Bi wiring make no difference at all, Regardless of which cables or types you use. Bi wiring or Bi amping was created for speakers which have LF and Hf completely separated with no cross over. Bi amping will make a tiny difference that you may not ever hear, but Bi wiring does not work, unless you buy the Focal speakers which do not use Cross overs at all. I only use 9 Gauge Steven custom wires regardless of the length , I still have a few sets of Audioquest K2 single and double wire. I can tell you that after years of testing with different cables Audioquest, Mogami, Gobel, Kimber, Crystalcable and others, using my B&W 800 D3, Sonus Faber Aida, and my studio Arendal 1723, is no difference at all. Equipment McIntosh MX 180 and MC1.25W mono blocks.
@@oneemotiva4975 I disagree. In speakers with two (or more) sets of binding posts the HF and LF drivers ARE completely electrically separated (which is why you need to use jumpers). They still have "crossovers" inside but these are just separate high pass and low pass filters for the HF and LF drivers. I agree that two sets of the SAME type of cable will make very little difference, but using different types of cable for the HF and LF does make sense because SOME (not all) cables are better suited to bass and others better for treble - as in my example, the smoother sounding AQ Midnight tamed the slightly aggressive tweeters of my Linn Keilidhs but made the bass sound a bit woolly, whereas the stranded Cable Talk Concert 2 did the opposite. So I found that using these two quite different cables in combination worked really well.
It's perfectly reasonable for the cables to be the same for each of course, but if it's in regard to high and low frequency cables as indicated in the video, it's not essential for that to be so. Between left and right channel the cable usage should be the same or as close as feasible for stable imaging. Per individual bi-wired channel, the low and high frequency cables carry different signal currents, as they see different loads at different frequencies. Since they're now no longer performing the same function, we don't have the primary cause for wanting cables to have all of the same characteristics. Whilst using identical cables might deliver a slightly more predictable result, when it comes down to it that's not typically what people are bi-wiring for.
