Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions What is bi-wiring?

Here is another rookie question? What is bi-wiring and what are the pros and cons?

Thanks,

Rich

Rich, bi-wiring(sometimes referred to as "buy-wiring") is pretty much all con. It means using two speaker wires instead of one from the amp to a speaker, which can be done if the speaker has separate input terminals for the woofer and the tweeter. There's no advantage to the procedure and no electrical difference except that using two wires is the same in resistance as using one wire three gauge numbers heavier(e.g. two 16 gauge wires equals one of 13 gauge), so it's a waste of time and money. An analysis of the setup can be found here and heres a discussion of some interest, not because it repeats obvious facts, but because it's a cable company electing to not go along with the myth.

Ahh, thanks for that link JohnK.

My ZCLs, ZSHs, ZCHs, and ZSLs were all mixed up. Now that they're fixed, I can rest easy.

Very surprising to hear that from a wiring company. I agree with Peter, though, the other article is somewhat, uh, complicated. Especially when I'm too lazy to read through the math. :-)

JohnK:
If a speaker contains only a woofer that has no crossover and a tweeter that has only a cutoff frequency then wouldn't biwire do well in this case?
http://www.reference3a.com/mmdecapo.htm
http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/equipment/1200/mmdecapo.htm

Saturn

I'd say biamping would work well in that case, but not necessarily biwiring. What's the difference (electrically) between biwiring and using the little strips? About 6 ft.

okey

Just saw this now, Sat. Took a quick look at the links and suppose it's a similar idea to the M3, i.e. the tweeter has a filtered rolloff but the woofer just rolls off naturally. As far as bi-wiring, this design wouldn't change the basic point that, as Ken implies, the only difference is that you have two wires running as the signal leaves the amp terminal instead of the two wire paths beginning just inside the speaker input terminal.

Hey Johnk;

But I thought the M3 was internally wired in the crossover like most speakers. The speaker above is not internally wired. So if you take out the plates at the back and only connect to the woofers sound will only come out on the woofers. I might be wrong on this ... but if you take out the plates on the connectors of most speakers you would still have sound on both the woofers and tweeters since internally it is conected at the crossover?...no?

Saturn

Ooh, interesting point! One wonders whether all these "bi-wireable" speakers are in fact even more marketing hype than we thought!

Of course, probably not. There's no reason why the external strips wouldn't provide the connection between the woofer and the crossover network which then connects to the tweeter/mid/etc.