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Bi-Wire


MistaChy

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I dont see how you could hear a difference when biwiring. the same signal is going through the speaker cables. I noticed biamping might make a very small difference if any. I have done this a while back on some RF62s. Basically you are wasting money, speaker cable, and banana plugs.

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i dont see how either... but it does what all the threads ive read say it do. my system sounds alive and crisp... elegant... when i bi wire. From doing my reserch, im not the only person who has been accused of seeing or hearing this so called "phantom". The point of it is i hear it and im happy. I'm sorry if others dont... and im sorry that those who do hear a performance gain get critisized for saying so. But like I said, im happy and i wouldnt have it any other way. i dont see the need to argue it anymore. this will probably be my last post on this topic. it always turns into a flame war everywhere ive read about it.

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Once the highs and lows have been separated in
this fashion, the strong current pulses and surges that a woofer
demands when reproducing bass or drums will not interact with the
delicate sounds of a flute or cymbal. The magnetic field of the low
frequency signals cannot modulate or interfere with the highs, and to a
lesser extent, the reverse is true.


That's not really true...


The
HF and LF cable are still connected at the amplifier, so both cables
see the same fullrange voltage. While it is true that there is less low
frequency current in the HF cable, there is always the same amount of
LF voltage on the amplifier end. And because the impedance of the wire
is small relative to the impedance of the tweeter's crossover network,
the LF voltage at the speaker end of the HF cable will also be
effectively the same as the amplifier end. In fact, because the LF
current is lower, the LF voltage at the terminals of the HF crossover
will actually be higher than the LF voltage at the terminals of the LF
crossover....


So all that to say, bi-wiring actually increases
the LF voltage seen by the tweeter. And because the voltage is higher,
you're getting more LF current into the tweeter than if you used a single cable.


Also, the
comment about magnetic fields of the low frequency signals is
misleading as well. The only way the LF current will modulate the HF is
if the extra current causes the cable itself to become nonlinear....that would
mean the impedance of the wire would need to change as a function of
the current flowing through it. In other words, in order for the low
frequencies to affect the high frequencies, the low frequency current
would need to cause a large enough temperature rise in the cable to
cause the HF voltage to change, or create enough flux to cause the
cable to saturate. While it is possible to find materials where this
will be the case, they wouldn't be good conductors and wouldn't be used for wire. If
you're worried about the saturation in your speaker cable, then you
shouldn't be using inductors in your crossover (because the inductors
will saturate well before the cable will). And because the wire
impedance is small relative to the speaker/crossover impedance, even a
doubling of the wire impedance would be negligable...and I would be
surprised if the wire impedance changed by more than 0.00001%. In other
words, it's not an issue. Air currents in the room are going to cause larger changes.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------


With all that in mind, I'd like to point out that increasing the LF
current inside the amplifier is gauranteed to cause intermodulations of
the higher frequencies....and it gets worse the higher the amplifier's
output impedance becomes. Because bi-wiring uses the same amplifier for
both the lows and highs, the amplifier is going to dominate by several
orders of magnitude any theoretical distortions in the wire.


I'd also like to point out that the inductors and capacitors in your
crossover network are also going to introduce distortions that are
severals orders of magnitude (maybe billions?) larger than the effects
of the cable. Any argument for non-linearity in the speaker wire, must
also apply to inductors to a much larger degree.


So if you're going to argue for bi-wiring, then you should also be
bi-amping.....and if you're going to bi-amp, then a line-level
crossover is also going to way outperform a speaker-level
crossover....even if you do it with passive components (for those
afraid of DSP). This is why I cringe when people spend enough on their
cables that they could have doubled up on amplifiers and even
implemented a passive crossover for less money.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The current path's I describe can easily be plotted,
measured and verified by any speaker or cable engineer. There is
absolutely no doubt whatsoever about their existence or
validity.

But the existence of the current does not mean it
is a problem. I would love to see some data showing that it
is.

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i dont see how either... but it does what all
the threads ive read say it do. my system sounds alive and
crisp... elegant... when i bi wire. From doing my reserch, im not the
only person who has been accused of seeing or hearing this so called
"phantom". The point of it is i hear it and im happy. I'm sorry if
others dont... and im sorry that those who do hear a performance gain get critisized for saying so.
But like I said, im happy and i wouldnt have it any other way. i dont
see the need to argue it anymore. this will probably be my last post on
this topic. it always turns into a flame war everywhere ive read about
it.

Would you describe the difference you hear as a
large effect or a small effect? And do you think you'd be able to
identify the difference without knowing how it was wired?

I
don't ask to be argumentative or criticize or whatever....I would be
very impressed by someone that could identify the difference with blind
listening. But if you can't, I'd be interested to know why you feel
that is the case (I wouldn't conclude that you couldn't hear a
difference either). Heck, I would be equally as inquisitive as to why
you could too.

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i dont see how either... but it does what all the threads ive read say it do. my system sounds alive and crisp... elegant... when i bi wire. From doing my reserch, im not the only person who has been accused of seeing or hearing this so called "phantom". The point of it is i hear it and im happy. I'm sorry if others dont... and im sorry that those who do hear a performance gain get critisized for saying so. But like I said, im happy and i wouldnt have it any other way. i dont see the need to argue it anymore. this will probably be my last post on this topic. it always turns into a flame war everywhere ive read about it.

Would you describe the difference you hear as a large effect or a small effect? And do you think you'd be able to identify the difference without knowing how it was wired?

I don't ask to be argumentative or criticize or whatever....I would be very impressed by someone that could identify the difference with blind listening. But if you can't, I'd be interested to know why you feel that is the case (I wouldn't conclude that you couldn't hear a difference either). Heck, I would be equally as inquisitive as to why you could too.

yes, i would be able to tell. i dont know what to say other than what ive already said in 3 or 4 posts above already. when i buy wire, i notice an instant difference. my high's come alive and start tweeting... meaning they are clear and crisp as not before. the sound is more defined in the base, meaning not as mushy. its clearer, cleaner, and more in your face, in the air... jumping out at you. i notice it instantly...

i hope im not setting myself up to get critisized again... to be told that im hearing a phantom improvement thats not really there. im a very competent person... and its like telling someone that there isnt a bee in the room and they just got stung in the face and the stinger is still in their cheek.

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i hope im not setting myself up to get critisized again... to be told that im hearing a phantom improvement thats not really there. im a very competent person... and its like telling someone that there isnt a bee in the room and they just got stung in the face and the stinger is still in their cheek.

lol, I can totally understand that sentiment.

I gotta be honest that I'm a bit skeptical, but only because I've gotten similar responses when nothing changed except what the listener was being told was playing. I think that would be more akin to blindfolding someone and pinching them, but telling them it was a bee. I know I fake myself out all the time...especially when trying out new designs. I wouldn't be trying something new if I didn't think it was better...but my thinking it's better changes my frame of reference enough to make it sound different.

I dunno if it's insane to suggest that your frame of reference might be changing or not. I've no doubt you're hearing what you describe, but is it because of the cables, or because of psychoacoustics? I suppose some might suggest that the reason why doesn't matter if it's better. I think it's the engineer in me that is always wanting to know why so that it can be reproduced. If it's just a matter of rebranding, then that makes my life easier because it means there aren't any problems to be solved.

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welll i dont notice it with vocal audio... but when im playing music, its substantially clear. i retested it the other day like i posted earlier. i tested it with the same songs bi-wire and no bi-wire and there is a definate difference. im going to try bi amping tonight to see if i notice even more improvement. my surrounds arnt here yet, and the hamon kardon surrounds i was temporarily using just got put in the work out room, so now i wont have surround until my rs-52's and rsx-5's come in next week and my broken pioneer bluray gets fixed. so its the perfect time to try biamping because i got nothing better to do with my time. :-/

i will post results [:D]

a work in progress

after.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm interested as to whether the bi-amping sounded any better?

What Dr. Who is saying makes 100% sense from an electrical engineering perspective. The article lost all credibility to me, when in the first paragraph it states: "they are completely separated electrically from one another." Bi-wiring is definitely not seperated electrically as you tie both wires to the same posts at the amp. Yes, the currents are different on each wire (for better or for worst), but the voltage must be very very close to the same at the speaker end of the cables as 8 feet of cabling would have such a low resistance.

I'm not trying to critique you, but you really shouldn't be hearing a difference with just bi-wiring... I'm thinking about trying it now because you sound so convincing though ;)! When I bi-amped my RF-83's I did hear a difference and I prefere bi-amping them (although I didn't add a passive or active crossover).

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