That's a good one charlie, but my favorite has to be those "hockey pucks" (forget what they are called) you place on your speakers/equipment. Say-- how do you like the Emperor's new clothes?

Are you referring to those "shatki stones" things? My all time favorite were those adhesive "dots" that you placed on things, even in the room to improve the sound.

That's it! Adhesive dots, huh? That's good.

My hearing is so sensitive, I can hear things that don't exist.

Paul

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the 1derful1

p.s.

Here is a link that desccribes some benefits and disadvantages of bi-wiring.

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

[This message has been edited by Paul J. Stiles (edited March 01, 2003).]

One of the most rational explanations that I've read with respect to the improvements caused by bi-wiring came from the XLO Electric web site (http://www.xloelectric.com/technicalsupport.php#a10).

In a nutshell, they attribute any improvement from bi-wiring to the removal of the stamped, brass straps that are typically used to connect the high and low side of the crossover when not bi-wiring.

So they say it fixes something that being equiped for bi-wire caused? A '10' for creativity at the very least I'd say!

Yeah, sort of...

If the high and low sections of the xover are intended to be fed separately, then the only way for the speaker to work if you don't have bi-wire cables is to use a jumper (or the commonly supplied brass straps) across the binding posts. Perhaps brass straps aren't great conductors for this purpose.

The conclusion that I'd draw from this (and the one that XLO offers) is that you could replace the brass straps with good-quality wire jumpers and be fine.

As with many other things audio, I suspect that there may be some measureable differences (improvements?) that you could attribute to the bi-wire capability, but whether those differences are audible or not is another matter.

I've never taken the time to A/B my speakers both ways -- I've always bi-wireed at the recommendation of the speaker manufacturer.

It still makes no sense to me. Even though the material is a worse conductor than copper, the run is so short the resistance should be very, very low. Also, the straps I've seen were pretty husky, so even on a poor material, resistance will be proportional to length and inversely proportional to cross section.

I don't have speaker wire - the crossovers on my speakers extend back to the amp, so what do I know?

EDIT: [spelling]

[This message has been edited by charlie (edited March 16, 2003).]

Check out this analysis of bi-wiring:http://www.pcavtech.com/techtalk/biwire/index.htm . It's bunk. Save your cash and buy some CDs and DVDs.

Jeff


[This message has been edited by D'Arbignal (edited March 16, 2003).]

My humble opinion is:

Any benefit or detriment of bi-wiring must be dependent upon impedance of the wire itself, and even then, would be overwhelmingly resistive in nature, with little or no measureable reactance, even skin effect.

That has to be the difference between bi-wiring and merely parallelling the same two lengths of wire. I do have trouble believing that the supposed disadvantage of bi-wiring really matters.

Having said all that, when I made my in-wall stack and ran new speaker wires (and sub line-level interconnects) in the wall, I bi-wired for a few reasons:

1) I had a spool of 14 gauge handy, and felt that, for my power levels and wire lengths, a heavier gauge would be desirable. I could have merely parallelled, I suppose, but.....

2) My amps have two sets of terminals (with a slight difference) on most channels, Bob suggests trying it, and my speakers have two (three-actually) sets of terminals, plus.....

3) I could, and there was no good reason not to.

The most audible difference I made was using full-range pre-amp outputs (which the speaker maker suggests) instead of LFE outputs to drive the sub amps.



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Larry Fine
www.fineelectricco.com
My system