Bi-wiring speakers

hey buddy,
a one liner
bi wiring does not help in any way,
it is a very bad denotion in the hifi business
in short very very false claim.
have a nice time with two wires.

Cannot agree more with you. Just wasted two spade plugs and 2 meters of wire on a single speaker. Could not get any perceivable difference between the speaker that was biwired and the one that was'nt.

However, there is a lot of scientific information on biamping. I am interested to know about active cross overs and how this can be used in off the shelf speakers.

i agree with ojoi..biwiring is a myth..i have not tried it but the scientific evidence is glaring enough to put a huge hole thru its claims..

But biamping on the other hand has huge returns and yes ur right..u will need to open up ur cabinet..remove the passive Xocvers and have additional amps with an external active Xover .
Thisis effectively what i am aiming to do and should have my Xover ready by this time next week..

yeah benkenobi is right u need external crossovers with good amps by replacin ur passive xover so its little bit daring thing but one of the most important thing is that the quality that you get with active crossover is ultimate. Thats why ultra highend people will use this kind of setup but at the same time its really expensive but its very expensive also..

remember that for 3 way stereo you need 3 pairs of amps!!!! huh....so beware but it all depends sometimes there will be degradation of qulity if one couldnt desin the active crossover without considering the Electro Magnetic Interference then its gone...forget about the quality.... but if care is taken in desing aspect of the active crossover by taking care with slew rate distortion figurs and also how well its shelded........ like i said lot more factors but its strongly recommended to go for 4th roder linkwitz to get better results..but with low quality ics for active filters then forget the qualtiy...

but its tougher than the passive crossover coz 4th order introduces serious crossover distortions etc... again its going very deep... let me stop it here or else the desing process gets expalind like Kilometers long.........

sorry for my spell mistakes coz im very drowsy...byeeeee...

well you cannot just write it off, it depends on the speaker and the crossover.

Some speakers like and some dont. some manufacturers recommend it some dont and some people like it and some dont

No absolutes about it !

Thanks Sandeep. On a less technical note, just would like to point others to http://sound.westhost.com/bi-amp.htm.

Sachi, let us know how your active crossover project goes.

BTW you can also bi-amp in a passive mode, like I do.It does give you a fuller sound.

I am not sure if I am hearing anything significantly on my setup though. My receiver can be run in the biamp mode for the +2 channels. Let me try A/B testing using some low bass streams.

it all depends even upon the voice coil if u want to use the passive crossover then no problem u can use copper VC or Aluminium VC but if you are using the active crossover then its strongly recommended to use the Aluminium VC for best performance and stability...

Let me not go in depth regarding topic here..

hsmraj,

bi-amping usually means using two phisical amps and not connecting speaker A & B of the same amp to the speakers terminals.

Bi-amping not only makes a lot of sense but also improves the sound a hellovalot as you are powering your speakers with two amps so more power. Since one amp services the mid/tweeter and the other the woofer amps are not taxed as much as they wood. Ideal for amp setups with low/medium power.

manek.

Manek the speakers are properly bi-amped. I have two independent channels driven by the receiver and connected to seperate set of binding posts on the speakers. The two channels are electrically isolated between the receiver and the speaker.

One of the reasons I chose Arcam AVR300 was its ability to biamp front speakers. You could either use this in 7.1 mode or 5.1 mode with fronts biamped.

I connected left speaker in normal mode and the right speaker in bi-amp mode. I was expecting to see some improvement in bass performance, but from the nominal viewing distance, I could not make any significant different. I am sure the receiver is configured properly. Maybe I should do some more critical listening tests.

I thought true bi-amping required in addition to this selection of cross over frequencies. Most of the effect is due to the cross over selection. Maybe I should try a firmware upgrade on the receiver.

- Rajesh

Rajesh,

From what I read on your last post all you have done is bi-wire the speakers from the same amp(AVR) using different channels.
Bi-amping in its tru form means 2 physical pieces of amplifiers as independant units connected to your speakers with bi-wiring. If you power the top end(tweeters/midrange) of your speakers with the AVR and the bottom(bass driver) with another dedicated power amp(separate unit) then thats bi-amping to my mind. Thats when you will hear the difference.

Bi-amping with either active x-over or existing passive
x-overs in the speakers yields improvements in many cases.

Manek.

my vote is to Manek

Sorry for not being clear. AVR has 7 channels and has an option to biamp ch 1 & 6 and 2 & 7. I have configured the AVR in this mode.

I am using channels 1 & 6 in biamp mode connected to the front right and similarly 2 & 7 connected to front left. The speaker allows biwiring and I have removed the shorts for true bi-amping configuration.

Hope this clarifes my setup. I still do not see a noticable improvement in the sound. Let me know if anything else needs to be done for passive biamping.

Rajesh, you are still using the same amp, same power supply, same power circuits etc, all within one casing...you will hear no change or little change. Splitting channels from the same amp to my mind makes no difference or sense.

If you want to really bi-amp, you need another amplifier be it another avr or another power amp. This way you will have more power feeding your speakers with both amps not working that hard. This will make a difference in sound.

If you want to hear a difference with bi-amping, do one of the following :
1)connect a simple stereo amp to the fronts and run your centre and surrounds from the AVR.
2) Power the high frequency section of your front speakers with the AVR and the low frequency section with the stereo amp.

I hope I have made my point clear

Manek.

hello

just to add a comment about bi-wiring:

you may save the additional 2m (or whatever) of speaker cable.

BUT loads of speakers with bi-wiring terminals are provided with cheap "standard-bridges", even in higher price ranges. conclusively it makes quite a change with some speakers if u replace the provided bridge with a short bridge made out of your speaker cables.

greets dipak