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Bi-Wiring, is it still a "thing"?

The only thing I think in bi-wire's favour is that you can connect it to two separate amps. If you're not doing that, I doubt it has any real effect in practice. My speakers came with decent quality jumper cables so I single wired and am happy with the sound. I'm more intrigued by the additional earth connection each speaker has and whether to experiment with connecting it somewhere. Also interesting that amps don't have a specific 'earth' connection for speaker cable, in a way that might have been useful.

the problem here is that passive biamping is also a complete waste of time. How does the amplifier in a passive setup have any idea what goes on beyond the crossover. Reality is, it doesn’t.

In a passive setup the amplifier doesn’t know its driving anything big, or small. Therefore it still sends out a full bandwidth signal to the speaker and the potential advantage of biamping is totally lost. Passive systems can’t benefit. The only way to benefit from biamping is to have the crossover before the amplifier, not after.

the only tiny tiny potentially tangible benefit to passive biamping, is that now you don’t have one amplifier seeing the load characteristics of two runs of cable. Instead each amp only has to worry about one.

but then just use one amp, and one run of cable. Problem solved. Literally all that second amp is doing, is compensating for the use of a second cable. Any other benefits are purely imagined in a passive rig.
 
Bi wiring is the bizzare practice of taking two set of speaker cables from the left and right of an amp and wiring them to the tweeter and bass of each speaker. (Well thats my understanding)
I looked at this many years ago. The configuration I thought might have the biggest impact was one that recognized the slightly different requirements for connecting woofer and tweeter.

Normal 12-gauge twin pair is an excellent single-wiring compromise. However, adding insulated multi-strand (e.g. cat5) interleaved/braided cable for the tweeter prevents the small HF droop from the 12-gauge which simulated at a pretty low few tenths of a dB in my case.

I tried this out and could not be sure of hearing a difference. And to put the simulated difference into context it's less than changing the toe-in of the loudspeakers by a few degrees. That was the point where I abandoned the idea that bi-wiring could be generally useful.
 
In a passive setup the amplifier doesn’t know its driving anything big, or small. Therefore it still sends out a full bandwidth signal to the speaker and the potential advantage of biamping is totally lost. Passive systems can’t benefit. The only way to benefit from biamping is to have the crossover before the amplifier, not after.
The voltage will be the same in a passive biamp system, the current (and hence the power supply demands) won't be. Theoretically then any high order distortion products from the demands on the woofer amp will not find their way to the tweeter as well.

However, the answer to passive biamping is either to go active for a real improvement or to use the cost of the two amps which can't cope properly for a better one.
 
The voltage will be the same in a passive biamp system, the current (and hence the power supply demands) won't be. Theoretically then any high order distortion products from the demands on the woofer amp will not find their way to the tweeter as well.

However, the answer to passive biamping is either to go active for a real improvement or to use the cost of the two amps which can't cope properly for a better one.

Given the minimal cost of an active crossover i don't know why more don't try this. The little Behringers give a cheap entry point. Gives you so much more voltage headroom.
 
Surely the question here is, if bi-wiring and bi-amping can make a significant improvement, why do some serious speakers only come with single wire terminals?

There is an up-and-coming handmade hifi speaker company located near me, Holt Hill Audio, and I asked the owner/designer why he chose to mount a single pair of terminals. He responded that, because the crossovers are so simple, he did feel that bi-wiring or bi-amping would yield any benefits.
 
Well I wouldn't call that biwiring and would call the biamping.

Bi wiring is the bizzare practice of taking two set of speaker cables from the left and right of an amp and wiring them to the tweeter and bass of each speaker. (Well thats my understanding)

well, it uses two amplifiers, but not crossovers before them, so not the usually accepted definition, and each side does use two wires, so bi-wire as well. Although, because each amplifier has a facility where one or two loudspeakers can be connected, I ran two lengths of multistrand for the bass/mid band drive units, but couldn't hear any difference. But I intend to add some planar (pseudo ribbon) tweeters for when listening to (watching) older films, which can be switched in.

And as each amplifier is separate, the bass and treble controls can be used to fine tune each side for room compensation. Works for me. This maybe an example of pseudo vertical biamping, whereas the nostalgia system in another room uses horizontal pseudo biamping. One amplifier feeds just the bass drive units in each 'speaker, and another amplifier feeds mid and treble units in each 'speaker. Switching (A or A+B) again brings in pseudo ribbon tweeters.

There are two other systems with which I won't bore you (yet).
 
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Judging by the replies, indeed bi-wiring is going out of fashion!
I had always assumed it was a gimmick.
Recently I dug out some old speaker cable and doubled up. Despite the old cable being different (and inferior), the sound was, to my surprise, slightly clearer. The difference became a clear improvement once I used the same cables for both runs.
The only downside is the extra cable cost...
 
I think speaker crossover design and speaker designer true opinion should be leading factor to provide additional post for bi-amping possibility. As it can be beneficial.
As example, Dynaudio crossovers are distributing the signal through all components in crossover, thus it has no sense to put additional pair of posts to double it. It is clear and logical.
It is the shame that some manufacturers add those posts for pure fashion, not really believing there is some benefit, and if there is really not.
Bi-wiring is not beneficial for me, but bi-amping can be.
Especially with more than two drivers involved, let’s say 3way speakers.
Even with 2 way speakers it might be.
From economical point of view.
One can taylor the speakers response to his liking using different power amps for different section of the speaker if crossover is suitable designed for that. One doesn’t need to spend multiple times more for just one amp doing everything right.
Back to the topic, Bi-wiring for the speakers can be avoided by using good jumpers to improve over mediocre ones provided by manufacturer, like plate jumpers. It is easy and cheap fix.
 
I have had good results from passive biamping with no filters between amp and drivers but don't know about biwiring it's so long since I tried it. Anyway, if I biwired with my diy nva amps something may go pop as they need low capacitance speaker cables and biwiring increases capacitance I am led to believe.
 


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