Bi-Wiring, Part 1: 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒆𝒄𝒓𝒆𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒆𝒅

foreign so here's the back of a conventional speaker you have a plus and a minus you can either put bare wire underneath those once you unscrew them or you can connect for instance dual banana jacks foreign so here's a block diagram of a conventional normal two-way speaker you have the amplifier over here typically we show that with the symbol of a triangle this is the input this is the Amplified output I put it in a steel box so I made this box gray but the speaker I made a wooden box so I made the wooden box Brown anyway the signal comes out of the amplifier it leads to a short little wire to the outside of the cabinet to The Binding posts then this is the length of wire across your living room traveling to where you place your speakers it goes into the speaker cabinet another short piece of wire connects to a device called a crossover which separates the high frequencies to the Tweeter and the low frequencies to the woofer this speaker has bi-wireable or by ampable binding posts you have two sets you can either buy wire meaning run two runs of wires to your single amplifier or by amplify which means use one amplifier for the high frequency Tweeter section and another amplifier for the low frequency woofer section this video is discussing by wiring so with these supplied gold jumper straps removed from the speaker you can connect separately for the highs and separately for the lows so here are the two wires coming from the amp for the highs and the lows just playing a noise signal at the moment this is what the high sound like this is what the lows sound like combine them together and you have full range noise so the high and low frequency wires coming from your bi-wired speaker merge together at the amplifier posts just showing one channel of amplification to make this easy you can either merge them at The Binding post themselves or I've decided to merge them together on my dual banana Jack foreign or you can merge The Two Reds and blacks together onto single bananas so with a normal speaker you have just one wire but with by wiring you have two wires by wires you have one set of wires leading from the amplifier for the high frequency input leading ultimately to the Tweeter and then another set of wires for the low frequency section leading to the woofer benefit is said to be that you keep the highest and the lows separated as I mentioned earlier biamping is a completely different topic from by wiring you have two amps as well as two wires leading to the speaker and then there are two varieties of biamping active by amping the better kind differentiates the high frequencies to one amp and the low frequencies to the other amp each amp has a lesson a lesson burden so they actually can play slightly more loudly but in consumer by amping both amps have the full range signal coming in this is more typically called Passive by amping and I don't recommend it now on a buy wireable speaker you are not forced to buy wire you can also use a single wire by connecting the top to the bottom with the supplied jumper strap or just called jumper if you misplace it you also can just use a short run of speaker wire now we're back into conventional mode so you can connect to the bottom two or the top two it doesn't matter and you're connecting with one set of wires conventional wiring can either use bare wire into the holes at the bottom once you loosen these or use bananas if you had occasion two you can connect two wires to these for instance I've taken two of this speaker wire twisted Two Reds together two blacks together so here we're doing what's called dual wiring this is not by wiring this is dual wiring the two wires are both running together in parallel to my single amplifier and the advantage to this is I've reduced the resistance of the wire because you're using double the amount of strands compared to a single wire so let's take a closer look at the difference between a normally wired speaker and a bi-wired speaker first thing we're going to do is take a look at the crossover in the normally wired speaker we're going to erase the gray box and look at what's on the inside of one of these crossover networks here it is the wire signal comes in and it goes to two different parts a high pass filter which filters out the lows only the highs pass through to the Tweeter so that would be the treble and the low pass filter which lets the lows pass through and that goes to the woofer that would be sort of the base so that's what the crossover does next thing we're going to do is we're going to make this diagram easier to read by erasing two things the red wires and The Binding posts now you understand that whenever a signal comes into a cabinet there will be binding posts and you understand that all these wires are actually a plus and a minus a red and a black but I'm going to erase all of that to make the diagram easier to read now let's move on to the bi-wired speaker what I've been showing up to now is the simplistic version I've just shown the signal coming straight in and going to the Tweeter but in truth there are some Electronics inside so this is how it's often described in the owner's manuals they make it seem like you're going straight to the Tweeter on the woofer but in truth you do go through a high pass filter and a low pass filter just like we did up above so you are entering the cabinet with separate wires for the high frequency Network and for the low frequency network but you are still going through Electronics and the different sonically is said to be better transparency that's what owner's manual to this speaker I show in the video claims other people say it has better Clarity better detail Better Sound Stage electrically they sometimes say that the advantage is that the high and low frequencies don't contaminate each other something that's sometimes called intermodulation Distortion other people say that the back EMF or counter EMF EMF stands for electromotive Force it's sort of an electrical signal that goes in reverse out of the woofer and they say the problem up here is that the electromotive the back electromotive Force accidentally gets into the Tweeter for example and by keeping them separate you help eliminate that problem but let's take a closer look in this video what the real differences between normal and by wiring okay so this top diagram is our cheat sheet this is conventional wiring now below it I'm going to show you the mystery diagram and you have to identify what is it is it single normal wiring or is it by wiring ready here we go okay so here's our mystery diagram you have to identify what is this speaker I bet most of you said that it's a buy wired speaker look at the cabinet of the speaker all I'm doing is materializing it or making it disappear when I click my mouse button when you see where the cabinet is notice that this diagram is identical to this diagram you have a wire coming in from the amp it splits into two parts just like it does here it goes to a high pass filter in a low pass filter and then off to the drivers so in Truth by wiring is no different than normal wiring the only distinction is whether the split in the crossover to go to the high pass filter section in the low pass filter occurs inside the wooden box or outside the wooden box are you still having trouble seeing that these are the same diagram here let me modify this area just a little bit so you see this would be the same diagram this would be the same diagram this would be the same diagram this top diagram in this bottom diagram are exactly the same thing here's another way to look at it let me bring this cabinet back to the sort of normal size that you're expecting it to be [Music] and now let's change this so we started off from here but that's really electrically no different than this and it's really no different than this this is sort of what a speaker that has the uh gold jumper straps attached looks like it's no different than this it's no different than this it's no different than this the electrical block diagram is exactly the same so that's the the trick to understanding why bi-wiring is pretty much bogus there's no electrical difference so for instance those arguments that the counter electromotive force or back EMF is different between the two the argument that the woofer is sending electrical energy that gets into the Tweeter in this wiring diagram but for some reason not in this diagram that's absolutely bogus but does that not happen here or here or here or here or here electrically these are all the same thing it just doesn't matter so that argument about the electromotive force being the back electromotive force or counter EMF being different is bogus and then the idea of interim modulation Distortion as long as these these wires all touch it doesn't matter where they touch the cell here as the signal here as the signal here as the signal here has the signal here and as the signal here it's all one wire in electrical block diagrams one wire is assumed to be the same signal all the length and if you need to hear this from another Authority besides me look at the block diagram for by wiring at Wikipedia it's a little more simplistic than my diagram for instance I use the same symbol for both the Tweeter and the woofer but otherwise you'll see that it's exactly the same thing if the split occurs inside the wooden cabinet suddenly we call that normal wiring but if the split occurs outside the cabinet then we call it by wiring it's a ridiculous sham it's the same thing electrically also people have to get it out of their head that for some reason the high frequencies jump up here in the low frequencies jump down here the signal measured here is the same as the signal measured here is the same as the signal measured here is the same as the signal measured here it's only after you go through the high pass filter and the low pass filter that there's frequency differentiation signal at the moment this is what the high sound like this is what the lows sound like combine them together you have full range noise so that's at least how they conceptually describe it to you highs and lows but what happens if you attach the highs to the low input proves this is not just the just the highs it's the highs and lows the noise difference you hear is just the Tweeter versus the woofer plus the crossover Network foreign so it's an illusion that one is low frequency and one is high frequency both are carrying the full range signal so let's check out what's going on internally so this part is sometimes called the terminal cup I've turned off the amplifier and often these days they just Mount the crossover right to the terminal cup so now we have access to these and I'm going to test them with probes I have probe wires and I can connect to the Tweeter and to the woofer independently so I have my Spectrum analyzer set up and I have the test probes perilously connected to the Tweeter and woofer if I wiggle them they'll snap off and possibly short my amplifier but I'm trying to be very gentle so let's look at the Spectrum analyzer it's set from 20 to 20 kilohertz so here's the noise signal this is obviously the Tweeter after it goes through the high pass filter so only the highs pass through and this is the lows going to the woofer only the lows pass through so that's Tweeter and woofer however what if we disconnect these and instead you monitor just the highs coming in [Music] so now we're monitoring just the high frequency input [Music] look at that full bandwidth signal no crossover I thought those were supposed to be only the high frequencies that's what the brochure said so that's malarkey the incoming signal there you only hear it in the highs if I disconnect the lows you only hear the high frequencies but the signal itself as you can see is full bandwidth and the same is true down here [Music] supposedly that's just the lows coming in however the Spectrum analyzer shows that it's the full range signal 20 to 20. so much for the lows and highs traveling through separate wires that is a myth so the concept the intermodulation Distortion should be reduced when by wiring is based on the assumption that highs and lows are kept apart but they're not kept apart but just to be safe I ran IMD tests using both multi-tone sounds like this and also simpy two-tone tests which sound like this and neither showed any change in intermodulation Distortion in fact this one the sympty test showed that the bi-wired Tweeter was a little worse but I think that's really just because that last digit that .006 part varies reading to reading so another way to think about by wiring not being legit and literally the same thing is that they claim it that the high and the low frequencies by keeping them separated you don't contaminate each other or if you want to use fancier words there's no intermodulation distortion but that's not true the amplifier travels through a single wire right here to get to the outside of the box so if highs and lows contaminate each other when they travel through the same wire that has occurred right here so splitting it means you have two contaminated signals then traveling through to your make your music but the music started with the highs and lows combined through a single wire this little wire here so that's another reason that it's sort of bogus to claim that the highs and the lows are kept separated they aren't kept separated anywhere else the microphone wire and the recording studio it wasn't bi-wired the mic preamp it led to it wasn't bi-wired the mixing console the recording decks the compressors limiters equalizers processors none of it is bi-wired it all travels through single wires as does the signal in your stereo system at least right here so this this argument that keeping them separate makes them sound purer is all baloney the only legitimate difference between single wiring and by wiring is that you're using a lot more wire when you buy wire and that's why dealers like to push this myth because they know that the customer will buy wire twice as much as they need to buy uh because the fall for this myth which is completely bogus don't fall for it so the only legitimate thing you could say about it is that since you are using twice the number of strands across your living room floor it does have a lower resistance than using a single wire however you could have done that simply by using dual wiring on a single speaker dual or double wiring accomplishes the exact same thing and you don't need fancy binding posts on your speaker to do it so you can't really claim that that's the real advantage to buy wiring because you could have done it with any speaker I was a high-end dealer for a little over two decades and pretty much all the brands I carried did indeed have dual binding posts but you could argue they offered it for people who wanted to buy amp not buy wire also just because they have dual binding posts doesn't mean they believe in either by wiring or buy amping it just means they want to offer it for people who do think it's important or because they want to be friendly to the dealers that want to sell extra gear to the consumers it doesn't really say anything at all at all about what they themselves think some were very wishy-washy about it when I would Corner them on the topic one however sonus Faber that you see here in this image they make some speakers that cost a quarter of a million dollars by the way although these are just a few thousand their attitude when I cornered them off the Record was no we don't believe in it at all however we don't want to lose a single sale to any consumer that does think it's important because the added expense to us to provide this kind of terminal cup is Trivial compared to the sales that we think we'd lose another company I carried Wilson audio they make speakers that cost 685 000 they didn't believe in buy wiring at all they don't talk about it in their instruction manuals they themselves were anti-by-wiring

Channel: M. Zillch

Views: 356,098

Keywords: speakers, loudspeakers, audio, wire, wiring, stereo, audiophile, home theater, speaker wire, bi-amp, bi-amplify, bi-wire, bi-wiring, binding posts, crossover, myth, snake oil, biwiring, audioholics, high fidelity, hifi, hi-fi

Id: McH2tlfj0vo

Length: 26min 40sec (1600 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 31 2022