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BiWire Jumpers on biwireable speakers.
#1
Hi,
My two way speakers are biwireable and i use full range cables with jumpers. And it´s done the normal way: cables in the bottom +/- and jumpers attached the upper +/-.
I saw at AQ website, and was the first time for me, a different way of connection, as mentioned in the figure.
Is it something that makes sense and works?
Is there anyone else who has this type of connection?

Maybe everyone but me, right?


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#2
It will work but it's absolute nonsense. There's no way on earth your speakers are that fast that they will play any different with the current arriving a fraction of a second later, whichever way it's connected. For all intents and purposes the cables run parallel and anyone telling you there's a difference in sound is kidding themselves.

If I read this on a manufacturer's site I would close the tab on my browser and look elsewhere for cables because it shows a total misunderstanding of how current gets delivered and would make me wonder they know what they are doing altogether.
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#3
(29-Jul-2020, 00:38)Pim Wrote: It will work but it's absolute nonsense. There's no way on earth your speakers are that fast that they will play any different with the current arriving a fraction of a second later, whichever way it's connected. For all intents and purposes the cables run parallel and anyone telling you there's a difference in sound is kidding themselves.

If I read this on a manufacturer's site I would close the tab on my browser and look elsewhere for cables because it shows a total misunderstanding of how current gets delivered and would make me wonder they know what they are doing altogether.

Yes, i think i agree with you, Pim.
I can´t see a relevant advantage, in my humble opinion, in such alternative.
I saw it at Audioquest website and decide to ask before any try, my speakers demands some work to do that cabling configuration.
Mac mini with Roon, Devialet 220 Pro CI, Black Sixteen speaker cables, Sonus Faber Guarneri Tradition and a pair of ears.
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#4
I have a very vague recollection of seeing something about this connection method a long time ago but didn't pay too much attention because my audio speakers have never been biwirable.'

Pim mentions not being able to notice a difference because of the fraction of a second in time difference involved with the connection method and I think that's right. If the jumpers are 6" long, the difference in time involved for a 6" difference in path length is roughly 1/2200 sec of the signal travels at the speed of sound over the signal wire. My understanding is that electrical signals travel at much faster speeds, up to 80-90% light speed according to one cable ad I read, and the jumpers may be shorter than 6" so we're looking at an even smaller difference in time than 1/2200 sec.

But why think that any difference is related to signal path length? The vague recollection I have was that it had something to do with the crossover design. Looking at the diagram the first thing I notice is that for 3 way or hybrid panel speakers both cable connections are to the treble terminals. It's only for the 2 way terminals that the negative cable is connected to the bass and the positive to the treble. I can't see that making a difference if the tweeter and the mid-woofer are connected in phase but if they're connected out of phase in the crossover  then the treble cable is going to be connected to the negative lead for the tweeter so I suspect this may reverse the phase of the tweeter for tweeters that are wired out of phase with the mid-woofer. That may actually make a difference but I have no idea whether it's going to be a desirable difference. If you're running a biwirable 2 way then you could try it and see, the idea has been around for a long time and I've never seen a mention of it causing harm to a speaker, but if the speaker designer has done their job well and wired the tweeter out of phase for good reasons then I wouldn't expect the result to be desirable but there's going to be an element of personal taste involved and some people may like it.

Edit: I got the phase thing wrong, the wiring change doesn't change the phase of the connections to an out of phase tweeter. What it does do though is introduce a length difference in the lengths of the positive and negative paths to each driver. It's way too small a difference in length to affect our perception of arrival time but it may be enough of a difference to make a difference in the phase response of the tweeter at high frequencies relative to the woofer. That's the only thing I can think of and it may make a slight difference in high frequency response. 

The reason it's probably not recommended for 3 ways and hybrids is that on a 3 way it will reverse the phase of both the mid and the tweeter relative to the bass driver and on a panel hybrid it's going to reverse the phase of the panel which also has a power connection as well as a signal connection, and the woofer. I suspect neither of those outcomes are desirable.

So, there may be something to the idea but whether or not it's worthwhile may depend on the speaker and on the listener's tastes.
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
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#5
(29-Jul-2020, 01:36)David A Wrote: The reason it's probably not recommended for 3 ways and hybrids is that on a 3 way it will reverse the phase of both the mid and the tweeter relative to the bass driver and on a panel hybrid it's going to reverse the phase of the panel which also has a power connection as well as a signal connection, and the woofer. I suspect neither of those outcomes are desirable.

So, there may be something to the idea but whether or not it's worthwhile may depend on the speaker and on the listener's tastes.


Nope. There's no difference whatsoever. They're parallel connections either way, therefore there is no difference. There's also no 'maybe' difference and there's also no 'we can't measure everything you can hear' difference. There's only one difference and that's the way it looks, and since you can't see the back of your speakers when you're listening to them from the sweet spot, it's a waste of time.

I'm pretty disappointed that Audioquest thinks their customers are so gullible they even try to convince them of a difference. It's bullocks that's all it is.
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#6
Let me try breaking this down so a 4 year old can understand. Just imagine the current running through the cables is actually a car. There are cables so 4 cars driving parallel on the freeway and they all have to reach a certain point. One point is 6 inches further away than the others. At freeway speed there's only a theoretical difference between times of arrival. Only a photo finish will be able to tell the difference.

That's cars at car speed. Now imagine those cars driving close to the speed of light. Now suddenly the photo finish looks a lot less likely to tell you which car got there first. Now think about how much slower a tweeter moves compared to the speed of light and you'll get some idea of how insignificant this change is. The tweeter is your photo finish camera. The cars will be way passed the point before the camera has any chance of capturing them.

So no change. None.
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#7
@Pim ,

You may be right and I have to wonder whether there could be an audible difference but I don't know enough to say whether or not there will be.

BUT…

I can remember the times when people have quoted really nice, compelling reasons for why something should not make a difference and the subsequent discovery that there was a difference because the reasons quoted did not refer to the correct data. For example the big fight in the '60's about whether 2 amplifiers with the same THD rating could sound different. Some people said they heard a difference. The measurements made and quoted showed no difference and people claimed that was a proof that there was no audible difference. The problem was that the measurements quoted were the simple THD as a % measurement and they truly were identical, or so close it didn't matter, but the problem was that while the total THD figure was the same, the spectrum of the harmonic distortion was very different and those differences were audible. Use the wrong data and proofs just fall flat on their face.

You're right about the lengths of the speaker cables but there is a very small difference. The positive leg of the speaker cable to the woofer is the length of the jumper cable longer than its negative leg and the negative leg of the cable to the tweeter is the length of the jumper cable longer than its positive leg. We're talking a matter of inches at signal transmission speed so I really can't see how the cable length would make a difference. On the other hand there is a slight difference in the connection and how current flows through the speaker as a whole. Does that change something in the behaviour of the speaker? I don't know.

What I do know is that saying that it can't make a difference because the difference in speaker cable length is insignificant and can't affect anything does not show that there is no other difference to be considered or that there is no difference attributable to some other reason than the difference in cable length.

We've got an absence of proof that this makes a difference and that is not a proof that it does not make a difference. If
Roon Nucleus+, Devilalet Expert 140 Pro CI, Focal Sopra 2, PS Audio P12, Keces P8 LPS, Uptone Audio EtherREGEN with optical fibre link to my router, Shunyata Alpha NR and Sigma NR power cables, Shunyata Sigma ethernet cables, Shunyata Alpha V2 speaker cables, Grand Prix Audio Monaco rack, RealTRAPS acoustic treatment.

Brisbane, Qld, Australia
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#8
There are an infinite number of things for which there is no proof that they do or do not affect the sound of an audio system, and so for which one could construct an argument that they should "be considered" as a potential source of sound differences.  This includes an infinite number of things that vary with time outside our control, to the extent that as we are listening to a system we could not be sure that its sound quality is not changing from one microsecond to the next, independent of the music (if any) being played.

To avoid that kind of madness, I think we each have to have some kind of criteria for making decisions about what is reasonably likely to affect sound quality.  Personally I prefer to trust science, engineering, and common sense to help me make those decisions.

In short, I'm firmly with @Pim on this one.
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#9
(29-Jul-2020, 08:56)David A Wrote: @Pim ,

You may be right and I have to wonder whether there could be an audible difference but I don't know enough to say whether or not there will be.

BUT…

I can remember the times when people have quoted really nice, compelling reasons for why something should not make a difference and the subsequent discovery that there was a difference because the reasons quoted did not refer to the correct data. For example the big fight in the '60's about whether 2 amplifiers with the same THD rating could sound different. Some people said they heard a difference. The measurements made and quoted showed no difference and people claimed that was a proof that there was no audible difference. The problem was that the measurements quoted were the simple THD as a % measurement and they truly were identical, or so close it didn't matter, but the problem was that while the total THD figure was the same, the spectrum of the harmonic distortion was very different and those differences were audible. Use the wrong data and proofs just fall flat on their face.

You're right about the lengths of the speaker cables but there is a very small difference. The positive leg of the speaker cable to the woofer is the length of the jumper cable longer than its negative leg and the negative leg of the cable to the tweeter is the length of the jumper cable longer than its positive leg. We're talking a matter of inches at signal transmission speed so I really can't see how the cable length would make a difference. On the other hand there is a slight difference in the connection and how current flows through the speaker as a whole. Does that change something in the behaviour of the speaker? I don't know.

What I do know is that saying that it can't make a difference because the difference in speaker cable length is insignificant and can't affect anything does not show that there is no other difference to be considered or that there is no difference attributable to some other reason than the difference in cable length.

We've got an absence of proof that this makes a difference and that is not a proof that it does not make a difference. If

I disagree David.

I'm not an electronics engineer but if I were I would easily show proof. This is physics, nothing else. 
  • Very important to understand; there's no change in phase of the input, so that leaves only the timing of the signal reaching the tweeter. Suggesting there might be something else that influences the signal would just be silly and I don't think you or anyone else here would. 
  • A tweeter works almost infinitely slower than the speed of the signal going through it. So the proof would be in calculating how much delay there is in the delivery of the signal between the two ways of connecting. This would be a very, very small number. That then will show that the tweeter would probable have to work at a frequency way into the MegaHertz or GigaHertz to show any change. No tweeter does this so theory debunked. We're talking tweeter here because they're the fastest part of the speaker. Woofers are even less likely to be influenced. 
A simple way of understanding current and Voltage is to see it as water flow. If this was water in pipes, there would be some change in pressure between the low and the high frequency connections. I don't think anyone would deny that. But, if this was water under very high pressure going through very large pipes over this very short distance, it would be a much harder to convince anyone that last 6 inches has any practical influence.
                                                    Lifetime Roon, Mac mini, int. SSD, ext. HDD, tv as monitor, key board and track pad on bean bag as remote,Devialet 200, Od'A #097, Blue jeans speaker cable,                                     
                                                                                                                                                                            Dynaudio C1 MkII.
                                                                                                                                                                              Jim Smith's GBS.
                                                                                                                                                                        Northern NSW Australia.
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#10
(29-Jul-2020, 09:47)thumb5 Wrote: To avoid that kind of madness, I think we each have to have some kind of criteria for making decisions about what is reasonably likely to affect sound quality.  Personally I prefer to trust science, engineering, and common sense to help me make those decisions.

In short, I'm firmly with @Pim on this one.

Yes, me too, but... David isn´t wrong at all.
Maybe i must try that irrelevant connection followed by a great dissertation, with that description of stage, depth, full of adjectives about the sensations I had with many examples of albums, tracks and labels, of course.
Yes, i can do that... Wink
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