audvid,

Shotgun is two seperate cables, the theory being that by seperating the runs with full range cable and keeping the cable apart it will have a better benefit than an internal bi wire. You can read a lot about that at Audio Asylum in cable section. Just do a search on Shotgun. You can go any number of ways, if you are making the cables simply solder the matching conductors of each cable to the same spade. The speaker end are as normal. YOu can also use a banana and spade combo on the 2 cables keeping them completely seperate as you mentioned, or 2 banana's that are capable of piggy backing into each other. I am not real fond of the piggy back or banana's in general if the cable is where someone might trip and dilodge it. That is easy with the piggy back types that I have seen and with my grandkids a disaster waiting to happen. Hope that helps.

OFCCM, thank you very much, that does help. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

In the case of the Canare 4S11 cable, it has 4 separate 14ga conductors running through the single cable, so you can use it as a single bi-wire, one conductor for each speaker terminal. When used shotgun, you use 2 conductors (11ga equivalent) twisted together at the end for each speaker terminal, and 4 condutors at the amp end. Its a lot of wire to connect when all you have are screw terminals like I do on my old Dynaco. I ended up not doing shotgun there because of it.

I thought I would throw my two bits in: about a month ago I put the cheater plates back on my bi-wired speakers (B&W 604's driven by 200 watt Rotel) thus defeating the bi-wire configuration. I can say after a month of listening to many movies and cd's I am familiar with that I heard NO audible difference in the sound.

Up until that point I had bi-wired for 2 years based on the dealer's recommendation that I do so when I bought them. All I could say at that point in my HT education was that it at least looked cool and the 2nd set of posts were there so I might as well use them. As it turned out for my system, it didn't really matter one way or the other.

[This message has been edited by Joshorr (edited June 20, 2003).]

Ahhh, but your speakers know that the dual wires are still there, in spite of the jumper plate being present. I bet if you removed one of the wires, your soundstage would collapse by 53.8% (at least)......

Oh, at least!

While it seems I am in the minority, I do believe that bi-wire and bi-amp solutions can make noticeable improvements to the reproduction of music. While I watch movies on the same system, I would expect the benefits for movies to be far less evident, and in my case, less important.

B&W is a company with which I have a very long and satisfying experience. Over the past twenty years, I have owned numerous generations of their speakers. While visiting my in-laws in England two years ago, I had the opportunity to visit their headquarters in Worthing. We spoke to two of the engineers responsible for the development of the Nautilus line, and my respect for the philosophy of the company was significantly reinforced.

A large part of my affection for Outlaw Audio is based on what I perceive as a similar honesty and directness in their approach to the design and development of their product line. Case in point... B&W had some very functional, yet aesthetically challenged speaker designs throughout the early period of the company. The development of the drivers, crossovers, and cabinet/enclosures has all been reduced to the most detailed and fundamental analysis. At the time of my visit, I believe there were something like twenty Ph.D’s working on various elements of loudspeaker research and design.

The introduction of separate crossover boards in the B&W line is almost as old as the company itself. I believe bi-wire terminals were first included in the initial Matrix series release in 1987. B&W have an explanation of their reasons for providing the possibility for bi-wiring and bi-amping in the FAQ section of their website.

The engineers I spoke with at B&W said that they use a bi-amplified system configuration for their personal use, and that was sufficient enough for me to try it for myself. In my personal experience, playing well-recorded music, I believe there are significant sonic improvements to the bi-amplified system I have described in another Outlaw topic forum. It should be pointed out that because the B&W crossovers are designed to complement the specific drivers, it was not recommended to bypass the crossovers inside the speakers by using custom crossovers elsewhere in the signal path. This IS a valid solution for other speakers however.

While a significant number of prominent recording/mastering studios use B&W monitors, I do not know how many make use of the bi-wire terminal option. My guess it that it is mostly common. Since this subject has gotten so much mileage, I have promised myself to contact B&W, and perhaps some studios to hear their opinions and the list of supporting equipment.

Joshorr... The same US firm, located in Massachusetts distributes B&W and Rotel. If you look at some of the recent Rotel promotional video, B&W seem to be the only speakers connected. I believe that B&W 604’s are very capable speakers, so given the right recordings and supporting equipment, perhaps there will be some qualitative improvement to bi-wiring, but not easily noticeable. The B&W Nautilus technology speakers that incorporate the FST midrange unit, have better rendering of the midrange frequencies where I believe the benefits are more easily perceived.

While I respectfully disagree with those who would place bi-wiring and/or bi-amping in the same kettle with so many limp fish, I will acknowledge that the differences are subtle, and dependant on very good supporting equipment to allow them to be noticed at all.

My affection for the B&W mark, and the people behind it, is something that I believe many Outlaws and Gunslingers can understand. I am confident that when they took the trouble to include this feature, they were not motivated solely by some marketing survey, but in evolving the potential of the speaker line. B&W and Outlaw Audio are among that rare breed of companies that simply care enough to do things well, but not waste.

[This message has been edited by AGAssarsson (edited June 22, 2003).]

The phase change would not be linear for the entire frequency band anyway. Symetrix makes very decent parametrics, with specific attention to phase behavior.

Daring, though to put an EQ in the system. Even the finest room treatment cannot always make the loudspeaker locations work well with the size and geometry of the smaller rooms...


Snarf

I get a chance to experiment with other's equipment on a regular basis. And room equalization is more than a hobby for me, as I have been working with musicians, designing studios and clubs since the mid 80's.

While Symetrix does a great job with phase coherence, I have been looking at the new Behringer "Ultra Curve Pro 2496" as something new to try out, it is a 24 bit/96kHz digital processor. And two (2) SHARC 40bit processors for internal number crunching. If this thing works... half as good as the hype, wow... for $300 you can put a lot of tools to work for both big and little rooms. I have clients who are using it now, and have been astounded by it's price/performance ratio. Sound like some other audio equipment you've heard of?

We do analysis of the sound profiles of rooms at different positions. For a paying customer, or a tempermental musician, the sweet spot better be bigger than the head of a Callaway driver. We have found that if you just pass the high frequency (HF) signal (above 350 Hz) to the amps, the spacial information is often much better rendered. We usually can find architectural methods of shaping the HF sound profiles in rooms that work well.

For live music, track specific EQ, and other FX (effects) can be applied before summing at the mixing board. After summing, the signal can go to the active crossover network and specific room EQ is applied to the low frequency (LF) signal. This way, you EQ the room separately, and the musicians and sound engineers can play with all the knobs and boxes they want without changing the room EQ settings.

For my home, I only EQ the LF signal, and with great success. We have done extensive measurements of phase shift and frequency response. To do this well, you can not rely on a 1/3 octave tone generator and 31 band equalizer, as 1/3 of an octave is just too broad to get accurate measurements or good EQ solutions. There is PC software available that compares very well to the best sound analyzers. Try this site; http://www.trueaudio.com (available for $100) for example. This provides up to 1/24 octave measurements with great accuracy. I have compared the results to the $8,500 pro gear we still sometimes use, but the overall diagnostic ability is just as valuable.

So this is the principal reason why I bi-amp my main speakers (B&W N803's with an internal passive crossover); to achieve speaker/room EQ for LF, while keeping the HF signal clean, simple, and SPATIAL (a wide and deep soundstage with a big sweetspot). I will probably try a valve amp for the HF to try to hear what so many in the "tube community" have been trumpeting.

Anyway, it works for me, and I believe this technique could potentialy make a positive contribution to many other's systems as well.

Thanks for your post,
Allan

[This message has been edited by AGAssarsson (edited August 27, 2003).]