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Does Bi-Wiring Improve Sound Quality?


Dawson's Ridge

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17 minutes ago, Dawson's Ridge said:

creditable scientific evidence

Well that rules me out ! :wacko:

 

Besides that I don't believe it helps connected to the same amp/signal, but I'm barely credible and surely not scientific. 

 

 

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Someone on the Home Theater Geeks show once told me that bi-wiring is better because its like having two big dogs and having each one have their own leach instead of them sharing a single leash. :unsure2:

 

So in other words it does nothing for sound quality unless you are actually going to go full on bi-amping and active crossovers. In my opinion if you have an active crossover it should be your DAC as well or you are taking digital bits and making it analog then turning it digital then back to analog so the active crossover is your de-factor DAC and will negate any quality in an upstream DAC.

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I would think it would largely be dependent on what speaker and what amps. I have read on this forum of a number of people who use SS on the bass and tubes on the top end and report it being the best of both worlds. I use active crossovers so I am biamping ( and more) things to time align the big horns. But I doubt you would achieve anything in most cases where you are using the same amp and signal for both top and bottom.

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The conversation is getting a bit confused between bi-amping and bi-wiring.

 

With proper bi-amping: that is, separate amplifiers with the signal split before the amp either by an active or passive device, the improvement can be clearly audible.

It also allows folks use use their favorite low power amp and still have plenty of reserve for the dynamic passages. 

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3 hours ago, Dawson's Ridge said:

Can anyone provide creditable scientific evidence that bi-wiring (separate speaker wire runs to HF/MF and woofer) improves sound quality? 

I've been looking for several years for the evidence myself.  I can't find it and don't think it exist.  Plenty of descriptive stuff from audiophiles.  Keep things simple, get a good amp, good wire and a good preamp and you have achieved 98% of audio bliss.  Go after the other 2% will cost an additional 5X as musch as the 98% and then it will be, I guess it's better.  Sure it's better, look how much I've spent.:blink:

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17 minutes ago, Dawson's Ridge said:

Here is a technical article that speaks to the advantages and disadvantages of bi-wiring.

 

http://www.sonicdesign.se/biwire.html

From reading the article, it does not sound like they were using a passive XO and that the Hi and Lo frequency driver were separated.  This sounded like they were bi-amping.  The literature has confused this topic tremendously.  I have tried both, bi-wiring and bi-amping using a passive XO.  I just did not find much of an advantage to either.

 

One thing for sure, with a passive XO and bi-wiring, the Hi and Lo frequency driver each get a full signal.  Just like using the jumpers connected to the back of the speaker.  When this happens the Hi frequency and Lo frequency driver must get rid of the part of the signal that they won't be using.  The XO will get rid of the part not needed and dissipate it as heat.

 

One thing for sure, bi-wiring or bi-amping look cool.  The aesthetic of the system do add to our listening enjoyment.  For those that want to do this, it is Ok, as far as, I'm concern

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1 hour ago, derrickdj1 said:

The XO will get rid of the part not needed and dissipate it as heat.

 

 

Um not ... crossovers are not heating up...   High pass does not dissipate the woofer's low frequency signal and vice versa...  when bi amping with passive crossovers AFTER the amp, the Xover presents a high impedance to the amp over the unwanted frequencies.  So the amp is sending the full frequency range to the XO but at the  unwanted frequencies,  the current is very low, ergo watts dissipated by the amp is very small for unwanted signal.

 

Bi amping with passive XO does not prevent clipping.  If a very strong low frequency signal hits the rails it will clip, creating massive harmonics. 

 

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It won't make much of a difference with a passive XO.  The two divers need to be separated and have wiries going to each driver.  With the drivers separated, now you need a XO to protect the driver.  At this point the passive crossover is not in play or has been removed.  So, now a new XO is needed.  This is where an electronic XO comes into play.  This way theie is no back feed of the signal to one or the other driver.  The tweeter will require 1/10 or less of the power needed for the bass driver.  Now bi-amping makes sense.  A lesser amp can be used to driver the tweeter.

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Any if not most of the benefits of passive bi-wiring or bi-amp can be accomplise by using a low guague wire or better amp.  For example, if bi-wiring with two sets of 12 g wire, use 9 g.  In the case of bi-amping, you may use a bit less powe per driver but, that is easy to remedy with a better amp.

 

Passive bi-amping, is also called fool's bi-amping for a reason.  If you really want a better sound, first get better speakers, second, treat the listening environment.  These two thing will no be in question on whether there is an improvement is SQ.  If passive bi-amping and bi-wiring really made a hughe difference there would be scores of research to prove it.  It's not the audio researchers somehow missed this topic.

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1 minute ago, Dawson's Ridge said:

The article said nothing about bi-amping. I assume the continued reference to bi-amping is because no one can provide creditable scientific evidence to support bi-amping?

 

" The result is a generation of more static and stochastic phase error sounds at different directions from the loudspeaker. The stochastic phase error sounds appear because there may be different types of unlinearities in the low- and high-frequency paths. "

 

There you have it! Obvious!  It's a techno version of Chopra wisdom! 

 

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1 hour ago, Dawson's Ridge said:

The article said nothing about bi-amping. I assume the continued reference to bi-amping is because no one can provide creditable scientific evidence to support bi-amping?

 

The idea with biwiring is to connect the amplifier to the filter halves separately to prevent intermodulation, generated by one driver, to influence the other driver. http://www.sonicdesign.se/biwire.html

 

They are saying filter halves.  Technically a passive XO does not have filter.  Capacitor, resistors can behave has a filter along with the inductors.  Either way you look at it, a large gauge wire will accomplished the same thing as bi-wiring.  Many of us have tried it, including me.  I eventually switched to a heavier gauge wire.  Give it a try and come back in a few weeks and report your anecdotal account to go along with the many other reports that can't be show to be statically significant from a scientific standpoint.

 

Bi-wiring is relatively cheap and technically easy to do, it is worth a try.  Nobody can tell you what you hear or don't hear for the most part.;)

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The only situation where bi-wiring might make a difference is if the woofer is being operated near it's Xmax and generating a lot of back EMF. Maybe. This does not describe the operation of any Klipsch product that I'm aware of.

 

IMO, bi-wiring is audiophool bullshit. Any theoretical improvement will be masked by frequency modulation distortion caused by the woofer cone's excessive motion at Xmax.

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Minor thread drift:  My Onkyo TX-NR717 has a bi-amp option in the on-screen display, so bi-amping is happening electronically before the passive bi-amp of the speaker crossover.

 

What I've never heard explained is exactly WHAT is going on in the AVR.  The manual (which I've read several times) does not address the technical aspects of HOW the AVR bi-amps.

 

My subjective listening tests suggest there is a difference in the detail of the mid-range, but VERY slight, very subtle.

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