Published Research on Bi-Wiring Speakers

[dc655321]

Because most home audio buyers don't want active speakers

To be fair, most home audio buyers get sold a story and don’t know any better. This is through no fault of their own: it’s an industry issue.

 

[Sancus]

Because most home audio buyers don't want active speakers. As a speaker designer, I'm not going to try and market speakers that no one will buy. Jim Salk offered an active version of a 2-way passive I designed, and he sold exactly one--the one he "bought" for his own HT. I know it may be irrational, but the market is the market.

I think buyers do want active speakers, they just don't want active speakers with only basic analog/digital inputs. Honestly, the studio monitor manufacturers have those pretty locked down anyways.

To do "active" right for consumers it has to be a product like the Vanatoos or the Kef LS50 Wireless, that you can just plug in and stream music to without messing around. Buchardt has the right idea too, they're just struggling a bit with the rather poor state of WISA hardware. Unfortunately, getting those electronics/software pieces right is a large barrier to entry for smaller manufacturers.

Another issue is that quite a few speakers are sold for HT, and AVRs really are not ideal for pairing with actives. Most AVRs under $1000 don't even have pre-outs! And having to run two sets of cables to every speaker isn't great. Power is generally easier to run than speaker cable because any nearby outlet will do, so wireless speakers are better, but wired actives are less convenient.

As much as audiophiles like to pretend they care about sound quality above all else, that's almost never true. Convenience is extremely important to selling products.

 

[Tangband]

Because most home audio buyers don't want active speakers. As a speaker designer, I'm not going to try and market speakers that no one will buy. Jim Salk offered an active version of a 2-way passive I designed, and he sold exactly one--the one he "bought" for his own HT. I know it may be irrational, but the market is the market.

Yes and thats a pity. The big stereo magazines such as stereophile also reviews mainly passive loudspeakers, often horrible expensive, often bad performing . With a good review , the magazine gets a lot of advertizing from the manufacturer. Everyone gets happy except the customers…

 

[Tangband]

To be fair, most home audio buyers get sold a story and don’t know any better. This is through no fault of their own: it’s an industry issue.

True. Many audio buyers also see the loudspeakers as secondary items and dont want to spend a lot of money on that= They will buy a cheap passive. They also want the latest flavour of the month, like dolby atmos . It should be the opposite.

 

[Dougey_Jones]

No it is also snake oil. You can replace the crossover this way, which obviously can make a huge difference, but otherwise there is no point to use a bi-amp set-up.

Yea, except for the whole doubling the power on tap part, surely that's snake-oil too.

 

[NTK]

Yea, except for the whole doubling the power on tap part, surely that's snake-oil too.

See this thread (in particular, posts #50 to end of thread).

Bi-Amping speakers

what are the downsides of bi-amping speakers with a single multiple channel amp (4 or more channels) ? Is it worth it or are 2 separate amplifiers really that much better?

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[pjug]

Audioholics did a long and detailed article on this back in 2007 (multiple pages);

Bi-Wiring A Loudspeaker: Does it Make a Difference?

Bi-wiring a loudspeaker involves running two pairs of cables tied together on the amp side but separated on the loudspeaker side to the low and high crossover sections. But, does it make a difference?

www.audioholics.com

JSmith

The exercise that Audioholics did is very interesting, but they hesitate to extrapolate much beyond their simple model of LR for low driver network and matched RC for the high driver network. But it makes sense that you will get similar results with real speakers. Any bi-wiring effect (single amp) can only happen when significant current flows through both the HF and LF wire pairs, so only at crossover region as their exercise shows. I thought I'd try to model this with real speaker characteristics (Overnight Sensations) using the published driver and crossover info and using VituixCAD. As you see, the normal and bi-wired curves overlay one another almost perfectly and the tiny difference (<0.05dB) looks just the same as with the simple Audioholics LR and RC model.

 

[Propheticus]

If @pjug 's post above isn't a clear 'case closed', I don't know what is.
Judging from the responses to the poll it's no news to many here either.

 

[DSJR]

A Q Acoustics owning pal of mine (an occasional poster here too) linked me the article in the OP some time ago. The firm updated their models a while later and guess what, the 'buy wire' terminals seem to have gone, to be replaced by one pair only. Make of that what you will... Dealers relished the whole bi-wire thing as they could sell twice as much cable at massive profit!

As for Linn, their speakers as of the early nineties did seem to me to be active models with a hobbled passive crossover to get people going. The Kaber was awful at first and there really did seem to be nasty reactions of the bass driver into the mid driver, these reactions bleeding through the crossover - disconnect the shortin glinks on the back and the reactions disappeared...

 

[brandonhall]

Dealers relished the whole bi-wire thing as they could sell twice as much cable at massive profit!

Interesting. This sounds right to me. The dealer isn't hurting anything and can sell the client another high markup item as an "add-on".

 

[Chrispy]

Interesting. This sounds right to me. The dealer isn't hurting anything and can sell the client another high markup item as an "add-on".

Depends how you define "hurting" I suppose. I find it offputting to say the least, would immediately cease talking to such a dealer/salesman if they tried to sell this nonsense.

 

[brandonhall]

Depends how you define "hurting" I suppose. I find it offputting to say the least, would immediately cease talking to such a dealer/salesman if they tried to sell this nonsense.

Oh, for sure but you're a knowledgeable buyer who's aware of measurements. Most people and some dealers probably aren't.

 

[Chrispy]

Oh, for sure but you're a knowledgeable buyer who's aware of measurements. Most people and some dealers probably aren't.

Some dealers? I'd think most myself from experience (but gotta include the mass market guys like BB I suppose). This is where I think this nonsense can be hurtful, though, is to the uninformed....

 

[brandonhall]

Some dealers? I'd think most myself from experience (but gotta include the mass market guys like BB I suppose). This is where I think this nonsense can be hurtful, though, is to the uninformed....

I'm trying to be charitable

 

[Chrispy]

I'm trying to be charitable

LOL I have little charity when it comes to wire nonsense I suppose

 

[Propheticus]

Depends how you define "hurting" I suppose. I find it offputting to say the least, would immediately cease talking to such a dealer/salesman if they tried to sell this nonsense.

I've had a mild version of marking up happen. While buying a complete system -AVR with speakers and a subwoofer- I had asked for a deal on the total because I was spending a large sum with them. Instead of discounting, the salesman threw in some expensive cables (AQ) for a heavily reduced price.
At the time I though I was getting a good deal. Now that I've found ASR and know a bit more.... I understand that instead of discounting on lower margin gear the man just removed some of the ridiculously high margin on the cables, still not selling at a loss, and making it look like a great deal.

At least the cables look nice and are nicely sleeved and heatshrunk etc. But I already had to re-attach and tighten some of the banana plugs, so build quality...meh.
Had I known how useless expensive cables are then, I had declined the AQ cables and asked for an actual deal + made my own cables from bulk cable and separate bananas and heat shrink.

 

[Lambda]

bi-wiring alone makes no sens but bi-wiring bi-amp bi-eq, bi-limiter ... is the norm for processional monitor speakers like genelec and for large PA systems.

If your already running a DSP system you can do the x over also in DSP

 

[mSpot]

What I never understood is is why stop at two wires. What is special about two wires? Why not three or four wires?

A cable goes to each driver, so 2 cables for 2-way speakers. Some speaker manufacturers have terminals to enable tri-wire on 3-way speakers and quad-wire on 4-way speakers.

 

[Marijnvp]

Dealers relished the whole bi-wire thing as they could sell twice as much cable at massive profit!

So I bought my stuff at Hifi Klubben and exactly this happened to me. I did not even believe AudioQuest cables would make a difference. And now here I am rocking my speakers with those fat overprices bi-wired speakers.

Thought I’d do some research afterwards if it would make a difference or not. So my gut feeling was right. But I find it difficult to say no when asked in the retail venue…

 

[JohnnyNG]

I found these comments from the guys at Purifi interesting:

Lars: Having a super low output impedance does have one real benefit: it makes bi-wiring work. The whole point of bi-wiring is to isolate the tweeter and woofer portions electrically. If you have a common impedance in series with the speaker, distorted currents produced by the woofer will turn into a distorted output voltage which in turn is seen by the tweeter section. So if you want bi-wiring to work its magic you really do need an extremely low output impedance, which is the same as super high DF of course.

Bruno: Good point, a hundred might not be enough then. I think people resort to bi-amping when their amps don’t have low enough output impedance for bi-wiring to do the trick. So for a serious audiophile having really high DF is a real advantage, if only financially.

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/bits...eaders-qa-with-lars-risbo-bruno-putzeys-r815/

Not quite sure what "its magic" or "the trick" means wrt measured results.