[Mass. Wine Guy]

I just got a pair of Silverline Minuets and they can be biwired. I never had this option before. What's the easiest way to do this? Is it worthwhile to biwire speakers? Are there situations where you should not do so?

What are good but cheap speaker wires? Are these good?:

http://www.anticables.com/home.html

Thank you.

[koyaan]

I've tried bi-wiring a couple of times and couldn't really tell any difference. It sould just give you the same effect as using a larger gague speaker cable. I'm also of the " cable makes little difference" school, so I may just not be sensitive to subtle changes.

[Charles Calkins]

Take a look at Blue Jeans cables. Very good for the price.

                      cheers
                     Charlie

[electricbear]

The benefits on biwiring seem to vary from speaker to speaker. On some speakers their appears to be no difference while on some others there is a slight perceivable difference. I usually tell people that if you can biwire at little or no additional cost then do it. If it means buying new wire and significant cost then don't bother doing it.

[Letitroll98]

Another low cost alternative to bi wiring is to use a good set of high quality jumpers, but use the positive terminal on one set of inputs and the negative terminal on the other.  e.g. Positive speaker wire into the tweeter set and negative speaker wire into the woofer set, or vise versa.

[Chris Adams]

+1 with what electricbear said. I managed and owned a hifi shop for about 20 years and have continued as a hobby for 15 years. In that time I tried biwire or not on many speakers. Some with improvement and some not. In fact some speaks sounded better with single wire even though they were biwire capable. One brand of speakers had biwire posts that were wired together internally nullifying the biwire capability. If anyone had biamped those speakers, amps would have gone up in smoke.

[BrysTony]

To me bi-wiring is nothing more than moving the jumper from the speaker to the amplifier.  Any improvements are most likely due to the larger effective gauge of the speaker wire.

[madisonears]

The only time biwiring will prove beneficial is when different types of wire are used for mids/highs and bass.  Using the same wire for both is pointless.

If you have wire with excellent mids/highs but flabby bass, guess where that goes?  A different wire, perhaps silver, has superb bass control but strident highs.  Why not put it on the woofers?  Now you have a reason to biwire, and it's NOT because of the speakers.

Peace,
Tom E 

[Letitroll98]

So there's a mix of opinion on bi wiring speakers, this we know.  Is there any thoughts on bi wiring being better or worse for tiny speakers like the Silverline Minuets, or is it reserved only for large floorstanders, or for multi driver speakers, or any other category anyone thinks makes a difference.  I'd be more interested in your experience with specific applications rather than another go round about bi wiring per say.

As for speaker wires, that question is best put over on Path of Least Resistance, but as enclosures do need to be hooked up, I'll venture an opinion of a general nature.  They look interesting and iconoclastic.  I haven't tried them yet.  But I've found that iconoclastic audio manufacturers, including cables, often have an iconoclastic sound to them, very good under the right circumstances, possibly fatal to your sound quality in others.  The price of admission here is low, so I'd say go for it and report back your findings.     

[turkey]

I just got a pair of Silverline Minuets and they can be biwired. I never had this option before. What's the easiest way to do this? Is it worthwhile to biwire speakers? Are there situations where you should not do so?

I haven't found that it's worthwhile, and there are good engineering reasons why it doesn't actually make a difference. (For instance, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superposition_principle)

I guess you can go ahead and play with it. It doesn't hurt anything, it just costs more than it needs to.

What are good but cheap speaker wires? Are these good?:

Blue Jeans has good products with no BS. I'd second the vote for them.

[koyaan]

Let's make that a third. I've had nothing but good experiences with Blue Jeans. If your intrested in terminating the cabels yourself, they've also got an excellent "haw to" on theri web-site.

[Vincent Kars]

A nice article explaining bi-wiring: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~jcgl/Scots_Guide/audio/biwire/Page1.html

[etcarroll]

As others have said, try it, its different from speaker to speaker, and maybe amp to amp.

I was in the camp that - in theory - it shouldn't make a difference.

Then a friend stopped by with bi-wires for me to try, and I noticed a slight, but pleasing improvement in sound. So I bought some Rondo 4x4.0 cable and bi-wired my speakers permanent.