OK. I'll explain.
We normally install bi-wire terminals on most of our speakers. But I've tried bi-wiring many times in the past and I can't say I could ever hear a difference I could accurately identify in a blind A/B test.
When we build the speakers, we ship them with Cardas jumpers since many of our customers don't bi-wire and we want to save them the trouble of making of finding jumpers. When I listen to speakers, I don't want to go through the bother of taking the jumpers off, so I don't normally bi-wire.
The cables we happened to be using in this case were bi-wire cables. And since Frank had two of his Ultra 550's bridged, I didn't want to take a chance that the second set of wires would touch and short out him amp. So I just shoved them into the medrange/tweeter binding posts. They certainly couldn't hurt anything that way. And I never gave it another thought.
On Sunday, someone asked about it and I had to laugh. Here we are at an audio show displaying high end gear and the bi-wired terminals were jumpered. People seeing that must have thought we were crazy. What's more, we didn't have fancy power conditioners, multi-buck interconnects or anything else that looked impressive.
I guess I should pay more attention to these things. On the other hand, if they liked the sound, they certainly couldn't say it was due to bi-wiring, fancy cables, interconnects or the power conditioners we were using. It must have been Frank's source gear and our speakers.
Just so you know, Frank used $.78 Radio Shack interconnects troughout and 16-gauge Radio Shack speaker wire on most of our set-ups. They all sounded pretty good. And so it goes...
- Jim
