I want to buy decent cables for my speakers and was wondering on how the setup should be.

The speakers in question (Infinity Alpha 40) is biwirable. My amp has two pairs of speaker outputs. In this case which one is a better idea: to use biwiring cables or use separate wires using both of the speaker outputs on my amp? If I use separate identical cables, does the length make difference?

And about the cable diameter, are the thick ones necessarily better? If so how much? I am planning to spend around $80 for my cabling. 7 feet cable for each channel is sufficient. Do you have any suggestions on quality but cheap cables? What do you think about the ones www.knukonceptz.com ?

Please let me know what you think. Your help is much appreciated.

Bi-wiring, where possible, is a very good idea. My B&W 800s are bi-wired to my Bryston B14ST. If you go to Audio Asylum, HiFi Heaven or Google and do search on bi-wiring, you can get some very good technical information.

My understanding is that it is of critical importance for the four cables to be all of the same length. My cables were made up by LATInternational.com on their top grade cable. I think they are 6 feet long and of 10 or 11 gauge. They were quite a bit more than $80.

I have my PSB Goldi's bi-wired with MIT T2's. I think you can get them cheap at audioadvisor now. They're nice, mellow and slightly warm cables (but thick as garden hoses, so low WAF) if that's what your system needs.
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There's a difference between bi-wiring and bi-amping which is what you were asking about. Bi-amping is using two channels in an amp to power one speaker. Usually, there is a way to direct one channel to handle low frequencies, and another to handle high-frequencies. No idea if your amp will let you do this.

Bi-wiring, OTOH is using one amp channel to power one speaker like normal, but splitting the end of the cable that plugs into your speaker into a 4-headed hydra that you plug individually into your speaker's rear (if it has 2 sets of input jacks, not all do).

That's where my knowledge ends. I bet there's plenty of debate about whether bi-amping or bi-wiring make any rational sense at all. I decided to bi-wire because my main channels had 4 sets of input jacks. I thought-- what the hell, might as well bi-wire.

Mark

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Not really Mark. I actually did quite a bit of googling and reading. My budget is limited and biamping seems to be a remote option at the moment. I guess I wasn't clear. My amp has two speaker outputs so instead of using a Y cable like a regular biwire cable you can use regular cables and connect highs to Speaker A output and lows to speaker B output and the circuit is closed. That's a legitimate way of connecting which theoretically creates the same effect of using biwire cables. Some people claim that this sounds better because of the fact that magnetic fields in close proximity within the same cable jacket may compromise the bi-wiring advantage to some degree. Thanks...

I'd definitely bi-wire using both speaker outputs if possible. If nothing else, you keep your options open, as the cables can be used for regular operation later. A dedicated biwire cable may cost less, but becomes difficult to use for single wiring applications. Further, if there is any skimping on the internal shielding, the dedicated biwire cable may not be sonically as good as two cables. Since a dedicated biwire cable usually branches from a single output, you don't have the option of using both speaker outputs...which IMO is the best method.

I do use MIT MH-750 series II biwire cable, simply due to the cost of two runs of the regular cable.

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Here are links to some of the articles that differentiate bi-amping from bi-wiring and got me going on bi-wiring:

http://www.audiovideo101.com/learn/a...speakers19.asp

http://home1.pacific.net.sg/~axiom13/biwire.html

http://www.soundstage.com/synergize/synergize031998.htm

I like the relative simplicity of bi-wiring; not inserting another amplification and/or crossover circuit. One of my mantras from photography and other things optical is that the clarity of the image is often inversely proportional to the number of pieces of glass in the way (especially the cheaper less engineered pieces of glass like filters). I think this has application in the audio reproduction chain as well.

Then there is the elegance of the physics of bi-wiring in that the high and low frequencies automatically split at the amplifier to take the paths of least resistance to their respective drivers and are no longer interfering with each other to the same degree.

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Yes, that sounds very cool to me as well. Similarly if you biwire using both speaker outputs of your Amp in the way Speaker A->high, Speaker B->low, don't you also have the opportunity to run only High(tweeter and mid) or Low(woofer) as you wish (by turning on/off whichever line you wish)? It's basically using your speaker as if it were two separate speakers.

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That's how I understand it. The EMF from woofer settling is eliminated as a source of interference for the mid-high frequencies and you can optimize through secondary cable choices to a certain extent. I've been very pleased.

i also thought.. bi-wiring allows you to tune the tweeters and woofers with different cables.