I would never let some philosophical problem with passive networks get in the way of my decision. I base my decisions only on what sounds best with my associated gear.
Good point. I guess the only issue is what "best" actually means. Obviously, in this case it is your subjective opinion and what is best to one person's ears may not be to someone else's ears. I agree, though, the best way to decide what sounds "best" is to just listen and throw orthodoxy out the window. I still don't like MIT though...
I have read that the single cables with biwire terminations at the speakers end are not true biwires.
Do you really think that's true across the board? Regardless of the design? My Hologram II (not the Satori, sorry) was designed from the get go to be a biwire cable in a single-wire package according to the manufacturer. In fact, this cable has been optimized specifically for 2-way speakers. I'm not sure what Acostic Zen did to acheive such a goal, but I tried a lot of speaker wires and this one certainly souned the "best" to me.
Have you tried that skinny looking wire that 47 Labs sells? I have no idea what it sounds like, but it certainly looks like you might be able to get two sets connected to your amp.
You might also check out the British company DNM:
http://www.dnm.co.uk/cables.html . This is a very small diameter cable that eschews the design principles of many well known cables companies in favor of a few well argued engineering goals. From what I hear, the stuff is very good and not expensive. The world of audio cables is filled with a lot of snake oil and companies really feed off the paranoia that many audiophiles, including myself, have when it comes to trying to find the best cables at a given price point. When I chose my Acoustic Zens and I was trying various cables, I was surprised at the minor differences between various brands of cables. I really didn' t hear huge differences. Of course, small differences can make all the difference in the long run.
If you go to AA, there's a lot of posts about some Home Depot solid core that everybody is claiming is a world beater. I know we've heard it all before and this might be just another fad like the Radio Shack Optimus portable CD player but for pennies on the dollar you could buy enough of it to compare what a single run sounds like versus a double bi-wire run. It there's a positive difference in favor of the biwire double run, then you can reasonably extrapolate that some of the better cables out there might even have a more pronounced difference.
As far as jumpers, I've heard that Homegrown Audio makes some really nice ones:
http://www.homegrownaudio.com/products.htm . And they would probably do it within your budget. I seems like the Cardas jumpers you have should be very good though. They use a single piece of high quality solid copper vs. a jumper which has to go through mutliple solder points, wire and connectors. With all those changing interfaces, that's more opportunity for signal degradation, but like Michael said, you ears are the bottom line. Not sure how much all this diatribe has helped?
