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

fegs

fegs

pfm Member
I remember 20 years or so ago that bi-wiring or bi-amping your speakers was the way to go for big audio improvements apparently ....

Two runs of cable per speaker was the in thing in them days, I did it and never noticed a difference either!

Since I joined this forum I've never seen it mentioned, just wondered if it was still a "thing" or whether it's a myth from the 90's that's long since been confined to the history books

Cheers
 
Bi-amping yes, but bi-wiring no. Never could see the point, never heard any difference. Rather than buy 2 runs per speaker of average cable, just spend the same money on one run of better cable. ( if you believe cables make a difference that is).
 
Yes and no, some loudspeaker manufacturers are still using bi-wire terminals on their speakers, some never have and some have reverted to single wire.
I think that the original idea of offering bi-wire terminals was to enable speakers to be bi-amped, so using two stereo power amps & two pairs of speaker cables, one for HF one for LF, some 3way speakers also had tri-amp/wire terminals.
Some cable "manufacturers" did or perhaps still do offer bi-wire cables though not as popular now, a lot them do offer 'jumper' cables, short lengths to replace the provided links.
Some people will argue there's no difference to be heard in either cable type or what connection is used, some will clearly hear a difference.
 
I used biwiring on my Arcam Ones and at the time could swear I could hear a difference.
If Arcam said there was...
I reverted to single wiring one day because I needed the second set of cables, and that was absolutely painless. No loss whatsoever.
By the way, the Arcams were internally wired with normal, unstranded, rigid electric wire, of the kind you have in your walls.
 
Some of the technical types have posted the calculations that seem to show that bi-wiring actually increases resistance! I will leave it to one of them to clarify.
 
davidsrsb said:
Many recent speakers don't have the dual terminals. It has gone out of fashion
Click to expand...

I remember back in the day Epos saying that they knew bi-wiring was a waste of time but they fitted the terminals as people had been so brain washed into believing they needed them that they wouldn't buy the speakers if they were missing. Or something to that effect. Sounds exactly right.

So, what similar foolish trends are Hi-Fi buyers following today?
 
I tried bi-amping a while back. In the end I returned to a single power amp. Things sounded more together & natural this way.

Bi-wiring is just way to capitalise on people who don't want to or can't afford to bi-amp.
 
awkwardbydesign said:
Some of the technical types have posted the calculations that seem to show that bi-wiring actually increases resistance! I will leave it to one of them to clarify.
Click to expand...
Compared to what? Since most of the power is used by the low frequencies, replacing a single pair of thick wires with two pairs of half the size may result in an increased voltage drop along the bass/midrange set. With thick enough wires, there is no downside but also no upside.
 
When I bought my Dynaudio Contours, about 20 years ago, they had only single terminals.
I realised then and there.

Such a brilliant sounding speaker does not require any more cables.
 
Yomanze said:
I tried bi-amping a while back. In the end I returned to a single power amp. Things sounded more together & natural this way.

.
Click to expand...

I've heard the same thing said of monos V's stereo amps and of pre/power V's intergrated amps, of things sounding more 'together'
 
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