bi-wiring

Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.
I don't know what bi-wiring accomplishes, if anything, but... Assumig bi-wiring is a Good Thing, and assuming you could only bi-wire on one side of the crossover, would you put two pairs of wires between the amp and the crossover, or two pairs between the crossover and the speakers? Show your work.
 
Hi,
I tried taking the biwire xovers out of the speaker cabinet and locating them at the back of the amp. 4 short (120mm) wires into the xover and then 4 long (800mm) wires direct to the drivers. Alecto into AE1. There was little change to the sound that I could hear. But in the process I bypassed Acoustic E's multi insulated internal wiring.
I biwired my Tannoy Berkleys, the improvement was unbelievable, but kept the slightly modified xover inside the cabinet.
 
Hi, was Bill cracking a joke that went over my head? because of my poor choice of words?
If that caused confusion then I'll rephrase.
The improvement in sound quality was very much better than I had expected for a fairly simple mod done way back in the mid 80's.
Bill any response yet?
regards Andrew T.
 
Hi, a purely personal opinion on why bi-wiring works (maybe).
Currents in the long cables to the speakers cause voltage drops. These voltage drops affect the final voltage seen (felt) by the xover and drivers.
A large current pulse into the bass driver via the xover will modulate the voltage being delivered to the treble unit.
If bi-wiring separates the bass & treble cables at the amplifier then the current interactions will be reduced and only the shared route through the amp will be suffering this interaction. This should result in a cleaner signal to both halves of the xover & thence to the drivers.
Triple wiring or more will result in further improvements but I suspect as the current requirement of the individual drivers falls then the gains will be smaller. This may mean that separating the bass unit cabling is as far as it need go.
regards Andrew T.
 
The way to model this would be to draw the schematic, and add a resistor (or impedance block, if you say the wire is not ohmic) in place of the long length of wire. Next, see what happens as you change the value representing the wire and what happens when you move the long wire in front of or behind the crossover.

I think that realistically, there is so much more to be gained from bi/tri-amping, that the bi-wiring thing is kind of silly. Just get two amps, or use a thick enough cable that you're not altering its impedance in a major way. Keep in mind that the wire's imedance will probably be in the miliohms, and the drivers are around 8 ohms.
 
Status
This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.