Hello HA,

I need some bi-wirable speaker cables. I'm mainly after some with a low profile and light-colouring (assuming the sound quality is not actually degraded, of course). Spouse acceptance factor is key here If anyone can offer any recommendations, I'd really appreciate it.

Unfortunately I have lost the little adapters which bridge the connectors so I'm stuck having them bi-wired.

Is there any real benefit to bi-wiring anyhow or is it audiophile nonsense?? (My amp has seperate HF and LF outputs).

Cheers
R.

Bi-wiring is nonsense (not to confuse with bi-amping).

DISCLAIMER - I don't know much about bi-wiring. (I have built a tri-amped system.)

I think that is just a jumper-bar, and you should be able to replace it with a couple of pieces of wire* (at the speakers). Use heavy duty (low gauge) wire if it makes you "feel better", but wire gauge is less-important over short distances. (And, I'd probably hook the main wires to the woofer terminals.)

If I understand it correctly, with "normal" wiring the two "positive" (red?) terminals are shorted together (connected together) at the speaker, as are the two "negative" (black?) terminals. With bi-wiring, the same terminals are shorted together at the amplfier (with longer wire).

If you want to go ahead with bi-wiring and you don't want to buy special-purpose (expensive) bi-amp/biwiring cable, you can always use a pair of regular 2-conductor speaker wires. Or, you can get multi-purpose 4-conductor cable (or multi-conductor cable) by-the-foot from places that sell electronic parts, an electical supply outlet, or maybe from a home-improvement store. This kind of wire is used for all kinds of things... intercoms, heating & air conditioning etc... It's just a matter of finding something of the right gauge, that looks OK. (Telephone wire would work, but it's usually 24 or 22 gauge... too small.)

* P.S.
A paper clip, bent & cut "to spec" might be perfect!

I made my own (for a surround system), with some lengths of high-gauge lamp cord and a similar length of heat shrink tubing (available from any electronics shop). I pulled the three lengths of cable through the heat shrink, then shrunk it with a heat gun to produce a single cable with three cores. It's not the cheapest way to go (but much cheaper than commercial offerings), but it does look decent (I used black heat shrink) if you are careful.



Rod Elliot's article on the subject is worth a read:
http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm#bi_wiring

Thanks indeed, everyone. A lot of useful information.

Having read the posts and links, I think the way to go is to fashion some kind of replacement bridges out of the existing cable (or a paper clip! ) and buy something like the Gale Symphony 300s.

Its cost is low enough to make me not bother hunting around for a DIY solution, since I only need a few metres.

"Many people have said that bi-wiring improved the sound quality, and although I have not used it myself (bi-amping being so far superior), I will reserve judgement until further notice. While there are some measurable differences, if sensibly sized cables are used the difference is unlikely to be audible unless the loudspeaker's crossover network has serious anomalies."

My own take is if the speaker was designed to benefit from bi-wiring then it may make a difference (however small), but if a speaker was designed not to use bi-wiring then it probably performs just fine without it, because that is how it was designed and tested. Rewiring a non-bi-wired speaker to be bi-wired is probably not a good idea.

A excellent article on bi-wiring: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scots_...wire/Page1.html

I could find several flaws in this analysis, but I think the conclusion from it is that a speaker that has a flat response when not bi-wired may have a non-flat response when bi-wired. Also, even when a speaker is designed to have a flat response when bi-wired, will only have a flat response with a specific cable resistance, and will not be flat if the cable resistance is either higher or lower than that value.

I like Canare 4S8 cable from Markertek $0.55 /ft. Looks good so spousal aproval is good.

Well I got the wire I posted above this weekend. Did some fairly involved tests and I could not perceive a difference between the old (expensive) bi-wiring cable I had before, and the far cheaper non-biwired cable I bought.

I ended up fashioning the bridges for the terminals from an inch of the new cable and it seems to work perfectly.

I suspect that gaining the ability to move the speakers to a better location was a better upgrade than any cable could ever make.

Thanks all.