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Is bi-wiring worthwhile? (not bi-amping)


MeloManiac

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Update

Using Amazon Basic 16 gauge speaker wire, I biwired my Marantz PM5005 with my Klipsch rp160ms strictly following the manuals. I listened to my reference album on vinyl: Neil Young's This note's for you. Some tracks have really low bass.

Here are my findings:

Selecting speakers  A, only the woofer produces sound.

Selecting speakers B, only the tweeter horns produce sound. 

Selecting A+B produces normal sound.

 

I can hear minimal improvement, mostly better lows and wider soundstage.

 

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1 hour ago, ILI said:

Update

Using Amazon Basic 16 gauge speaker wire, I biwired my Marantz PM5005 with my Klipsch rp160ms strictly following the manuals. I listened to my reference album on vinyl: Neil Young's This note's for you. Some tracks have really low bass.

Here are my findings:

Selecting speakers  A, only the woofer produces sound.

Selecting speakers B, only the tweeter horns produce sound. 

Selecting A+B produces normal sound.

 

I can hear minimal improvement, mostly better lows and wider soundstage.

 

You've got it! And with the 16g doubled you might have reduced the resistivity getting the electrons to the crossovers. I could hear the difference too!!

Now go pick up some oxygen free copper 12 guage and what you've experienced will be magnified some more.

To all the naysayers, quit harping on what you have read and been told. I can tell you for certain that pickled beets are awful but you will not know until you have tried them yourself.

 

"Don't tell me my cabling is snake oil unless you've made direct comparisons yourself and couldn't discern the difference." And if you can't?.... "Why you need Klipsch Willis?"

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1 hour ago, ILI said:

Update

Using Amazon Basic 16 gauge speaker wire, I biwired my Marantz PM5005 with my Klipsch rp160ms strictly following the manuals. I listened to my reference album on vinyl: Neil Young's This note's for you. Some tracks have really low bass.

Here are my findings:

Selecting speakers  A, only the woofer produces sound.

Selecting speakers B, only the tweeter horns produce sound. 

Selecting A+B produces normal sound.

 

I can hear minimal improvement, mostly better lows and wider soundstage.

 

I find that Neil Young sounds best with both A+B unselected...:-)

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I bi-wire as well, and like the results.  One of these days I want to re-install the shorting straps with the bi-wire cable connected and see if the sound changes.

Now the same speaker cable would be used for both the bi-wire and strapped connection, giving me an apples to apples comparison.

 

Although it sounds scary (and I'm not suggesting you do this) it seems as though you could try the same thing.  With A and B on, your two 16 AWG cables would combine into one 13 AWG cable.

 

Mike

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5 hours ago, Falcar said:

Nah, I think bi-wiring doesn't make anything sound better and just complicates things for no reason. IMO, it's totally pointless.

 

I would tend to agree. Without getting into some idea of exotic wire for high/lows. I am still using some 30 yr old 12 gauge zip  cord... It hasn't oxidized or tarnished yet.

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On 8/28/2019 at 4:30 AM, ILI said:

After aquiring an entry level Marantz PM5005/CD5005 amp and cd player, I finalized my 'budget' system and enjoy the full power of my RP160M speakers. I'm really happy with this setup and the amp has also a very well sounding phono stage for my old vinyl records.

  • I was wondering if bi-wiring this combo would further improve the sound quality. I plan to test this myself one of these days. Reports on the internet are mostly that the effect is very limited. What is your experience with bi-wiring?
  • Both the Marantz and Klipsch manuals are not clear about the technical aspect of bi-wiring. What does it actually mean? Does it mean that the 'crossover' is done by the amp instead of by the speakers?

 

 

No, bi-wiring is useless. You'd be better off buying one good pair of speaker cables.

It is still using the crossover in the speaker. It is merely two pairs of cables in parallel from the amp to each speaker.

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On 8/29/2019 at 8:26 PM, JohnJ said:

With the single wires putting up to 80 in and the biwires putting 60 to the LF and 60 to the HF it is easy to see (hear) why I didn't go back.

 

Well, the way I understand it is the load seen by the amp is going to be half as much at A+B as to either A or B alone.  The math is easy to predict the available clean output power.  The number will (at least should be) twice with A+B as with either alone.  Which more or less reiterates the first sentence.

 

That number only goes up when the load goes down.  The load the amp sees mono-wired is the same as bi-wired, with the exception of possibly half the wire impedance, which is hopefully negligible either way.

 

So since ultimately the load your amp is seeing is the same (enough) across the spectrum either way, the power being used should be within at most a couple percent.

 

I'm just saying...

 

But I looked earlier and I've got enough bananas and wire to do it myself.  My amp doesn't have two sets of speaker outs so I'll have to piggyback them at the amp.  I hope that doesn't skew the results, hahaha!  I'll try it both with and without the speaker jumpers.  Just for the record it's a NAD C338 driving Forte IIIs.

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Nope, eighty each into one set. Not built like my tank of a Yamaha it does sixty each into two sets. Using all speaker outs & there's only two, Cambridge told me each HF and LF would get sixty. I just accept the improved volume and spl at say ten o'clock on the pot. Hey it does open up the F3s some, and the wiring I use has not been lacking in the first place!

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This is what the Marantz manual says: 

Bi-wiring connection

 

This connection limits the effects of signal interference between the high range speakers (tweeters) and low range speakers (woofers), allowing you to enjoy high quality playback.

When bi-wiring with bi-wireable speakers, connect the mid and high range terminals to SPEAKERS A (or SPEAKERS B), the low range terminals to SPEAKERS B (or SPEAKERS A).

 

I can't think of a reason why Marantz would lie about this.

 

This is from klipsch.com: Note: Bi-amping is not a requirement for Klipsch speakers. Whether you believe it delivers an audible improvement is up to your ears.

The note is about biamping, but I think it is fair to suppose it also or even more applies to bi-wiringWhy this undermining statement and still make speakers with this option?

 

Some manufacturers are much clearer on this matter: At Cambridge Audio all of our modern speakers do not have the capacity to be bi-wired. We always want to offer our customers the best possible components in our products, rather than adding an extra set of terminals to the speakers we would rather invest in a better crossover. This philosophy also extends to our views on wiring. Rather than spending your hard earned cash on two sets of mediocre wires that can be bi-wired into a speaker, why not single wire using some really great speaker cable? This is also more space effective as you don’t get the tangling mess of cables at the back of your hi-fi set up which can often come with bi-wiring.  

 

Could it be that with old, vintage amps, cables, an old (heritage?) speakers bi-wiring could bring down noisy interference? So Marantz allows it for that reason?

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21 hours ago, JohnJ said:

Nope, eighty each into one set. Not built like my tank of a Yamaha it does sixty each into two sets. Using all speaker outs & there's only two, Cambridge told me each HF and LF would get sixty. I just accept the improved volume and spl at say ten o'clock on the pot.

 

Like I clearly (or so I thought) explained above, the voltage the amp is outputting and the load it sees while doing it at any given frequency determines the power being dissipated.  It's just math.  If your wire is 0.2 ohms per (pair) run, then one way the amp is seeing 8.1 ohms load and the other is 8.2 ohms load.  That represents something on the order of 0.1 decibel difference.  That's because the only load difference the amp sees is extremely miniscule.  You hit right at 1 dB difference going from 8 to 8.5 ohms, but with wire charging you that much for carrying your signal you'd be hearing anomalies greater than the overall volume level change.  If you (or I) could even reliably detect a 1 dB change...

 

If you hooked up two full-range loads the math would indicate greater power being dissipated at any given volume knob level, which the loads would be sharing proportionately.  But you (and I sometime later today) aren't doing that.  It's still just the one of each-range driver behind the very same crossover / balancing network, with no sharing (duplication) of any (to speak of) programmatic content between the two runs.  Even though exactly the same content is available at all the wire run pairs' far ends, unless the current is being consumed it dissipates no power.

 

Well, I've been pecking away it this post over some time now.  I have the redundant wires run and running.  I have not been able to detect any volume difference listening to one deliciously-recorded Telemann quartet movement on period instruments and a couple minutes of John Wick (television) audio.  If the speakers sounded 13" deep before they maybe sound 13-1/2 or 14 now, but my audio memory is admittedly not that great.  It may just be that some time had passed between "listenings"...

 

Oh, my initial runs were 10' of #14 copper, well, might as well call it zip chord.  The wire I had on hand, same spool, was 27' remaining.  Not wanting a 7' piece of wire, even as nice as this, I made the "partner" leads 13.5' long.  So maybe that's throwing me off.  Different lengths and no integer factor of 57-1/8".

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2 hours ago, Deang said:

Folks at Cambridge not afraid to say "bullshit" - in that nice British kind of way.

And they build some nice amps, but not interested in any other brand of speakers than what I love.

https://techsupport.cambridgeaudio.com/hc/en-us/articles/207854965-What-would-the-power-output-of-the-CXA-be-if-I-connect-two-pairs-of-speakers-

 

https://www.avhub.com.au/product-reviews/hi-fi/cambridge-audio-cxa80-review-and-test-440408

 and a presshub extension of that article (Terry Wagg's now private channel) are what sold me on the not too $$ but even better than $$ CXA80

 

 

** @glens the first John Wick movie can rock on my Super Heresy when that Marylin Manson sounding song comes on. "Kill each other so we don't kill ourselves" or something like that sounds nice cranked!

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On 8/28/2019 at 4:43 AM, JohnJ said:

 the "enunciation" of the bass, mid and high frequency sounds is improved upon. 

Only wish I could bi-amp now!!

 

Bi-amping will be easier now that the wires are in place.

 

On 8/31/2019 at 5:38 AM, ILI said:

I can hear minimal improvement, mostly better lows and wider soundstage.

 

 

Glad to read that your bi-wire experiment was good for you.

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📢 Naysayers check out page four of this thread with pics from the RMAF show.

Obviously the Klipsch exhibit, see the wiring on the back? Bi Amp (probably) or bi-wire don't knock it unless you've tried it. Ask Roy what he thinks about it.

(D#!*

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On 8/31/2019 at 4:09 PM, Marvel said:

 

I would tend to agree. Without getting into some idea of exotic wire for high/lows. I am still using some 30 yr old 12 gauge zip  cord... It hasn't oxidized or tarnished yet.

 

Check this wire out. Quite good an inexpensive. https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/speaker-wire/supra-classic-1.6/bulk-cable-per-foot-15-awg/#tab-3

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