I'm going to bi-wire my m80's should the wires all be of uniform length. One side could be much shorter but should I crop all wires to the same length and coil the excess? Think I read sometime ago fronts should be same length and rears the same as well. Is this just bunk or is there merit to the notion? Thanks Again for input.

I have always cut my wires to the length needed to comfortably reach the speakers with a little slack to boot. They are all differing lengths, and I have never had a problem or noticed any difference in the sound of the speakers. YMMV.

The speed of light is pretty remarkably fast. You won't notice a difference over 1 foot, 10 feet, or 50 feet. You should also read this article before spending all that dough on biwiring. Or expensive cabling. BTW, this article doesn't just apply to Ultralink In Wall cabling...

Shake, welcome. Both biwiring and taking special pains to make speaker wires equal in length are bunk. The electromagnetic wave traveling down the outside of the wire which carries the power to the speaker travels at nearly the speed of light and it would take a difference of many miles for there to be an audible timing variance between the speakers. For a good summary by a veteran audio professional on speaker wire in general and a table of suggested lengths and gauges see this .

Darn, John beat me to the punch.

I would really like to understand why you think you need to worry about biwiring anyway?

Thanks folks. Why Bi-wire? Simple I have 7.1 capability and only 5.1 at the moment so I just wanted to play. Reciever manual talks about how to bi-wire so why not?

Ah. That's bi-amping. Which is a slightly different beast, but still not particularly useful.

It not even true bi amping, there will be no gain in sound and or performance with such a set up.

What does 5.1 or 7.1 surround have to do with bi-wiring, I think your confused on what bi-wiring and/or bi-amping is all about.

This is a good introduction by Alan from Axiom. If you read the entire article you will see that some 12 gauge wire by itself will do just fine. It appears that lab tests have also shown very little difference if any.

http://www.axiomaudio.com/tips_biwiring_and_biamping.html

Denons have the ability to use the unused surround amps to do biamping to the front channels.

Thanks Ken, was unaware of that with my Denon. Still not sure I would care to try.

No, AFAIK, there's not much point to it.

As the self-designated safety officer I'll just say "remember to disconnect those metal straps between the binding posts before firing it up"

Can you please provide us with a MSDS Mr Safety director.

Not 100% sure there's WHMIS info for any audio components... maybe ferrofluid?

Not sure how good John would look with a green hardhat, either.

Bren R.