Testing audiophile claims and myths - Page 120

What do you guys think of the thick wire for bass, thin wire for treble? Look here :

I have been experimenting with different gauge (thickness) cable on my speakers. I have a bi-wired setup, so my bass cables are different to my mid/treble cable. I started out with 16 AWG (1.5 mm^2) cores, and it sounded great. Listened to that for a couple of weeks, then changed everything in the bass section (including internal wiring) up to 9.5 AWG (6 mm^2), and the bass became more defined and articulate. I have had the 9.5 AWG cables in for two months or so - until today that is. Today I changed the cables running from the amplifier to the speaker up to 7 AWG (10.5 mm^2), and the definition and articulation is better still. The difference wasn't as pronounced as it was between the 16 AWG and 9.5 AWG, but still more than noticeable.

This sounds like expectation bias to me. What do you guys think?

The rest appears OK???

Without eliminating biases it could be an entirely imagined difference.

4 mm^2 is usually more than sufficient for length up to about 10 meters.

Btw, bi-wiring usually can not be detected in blind tests.

Just a technical question :

Passive bi-amping ... does not separate the highs from the lows? It's a claim I hear about all the time. People bi-amp using their receivers but i can't see how it would separate the signals. Correct me if I'm wrong here?

If passive bi-amping does not separate the signals and does not increase power, another claim I hear about all the time, what technical advantage would it have? None?

I tend to not be a fan but it does seperate the signals. The amps would blow up is their outputs were paralleled. One good amp beats 2 less good ones every time. The crossovers to the woofer and tweeter are almost allways seperate circuits tied together at the crossover input. Speakers with four terminals simple don't tie them together until the jumper is used. It's often better to strip the wire back and use it as your jumper than use the crappy gold plated jumpers given when single amping.

Volume will be determined by whatever is driving the woofer, period and will not be noticably different than if it that same amp was used full range. You can get the impression of it being able to play louder with an amp or 2 added to the upper ranges because you can clip the woofer amp without it affecting the more sensative upper ranges as strongly. When pasasive bi-amping one needs to make sure both amps have identical gain. Active crossovers offer much greater benefits but generally have to be manufacturer supplied. You'd be surprised how much EQ is used is in better products for greater linearity and more correct slopes.

Could you explain how passive bi-amping separates the highs from the lows? Thanks.

Do you mean bi-wiring with "passive bi-amping"?

In that case there's no separation at all. The electrons don't care if there's one or thousand cables.

There's only an advantage if you leave the speaker terminals bridged and use two pairs of wires with full wire gauge. On the other hand you could just use one pair of thicker wires with identical results.

Hi xnor,

I'm talking about AVR's that offer bi-amping functionality. Every mid-range receiver nowadays has the bi-amp feature. You normally have to give up Zone 2 in order to make it work. Would that qualify?

So there is no splitting of the highs and the lows? Which is what I suspect, I just need a second opinion.

In case of passive bi-amping there's also no splitting. Each amp receives the full-range signal.

I guess the question needs to be better asked. It does not seperate anything before the 2 amps but the 2 amps outputs do not interact. One only connects to the tweeter portion and the other only to the woofer portion. You wouldn't usually want a reciever to arbitrarily split frequencies in a full range speaker for the reasons I stated earlier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yahzi 

Hi xnor,

 

I'm talking about AVR's that offer bi-amping functionality. Every mid-range receiver nowadays has the bi-amp feature. You normally have to give up Zone 2 in order to make it work. Would that qualify?

 

So there is no splitting of the highs and the lows? Which is what I suspect, I just need a second opinion.

No splitting of the signal at the amp end. The split is in the speaker end, where one amp is powering the mids/tweeters, and another amp is powering the woofers. Dual input crossovers, rather than single input. Both amps are throwing full range signal at the speaker. That's all.  

What would a laymans explanation be of active vs passive bi-amping?

Active is crossover in front of 2 amps in a 2 way setup. It can be a passive or active network in front of the 2 amps and it is still considered active bi amping. Active networks are often passive divices with gain stages anyways and don't need to deal with current loads at this stage. When the amps are bandwidth limited at their inputs and directly connected to the drivers, that's active. When they are full range at both input and output and allow the speakers crossover network to do the bandwith limiting, it's passive. Passive crossovers can lower transient response and cause more reactivity.