Bi-wire for TAD Reference Ones ?

Googaliser

VIP/Donor
Mar 31, 2019
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Dear all,

As a new owner of these fabulous speakers (in piano black) I am looking to find the perfect cable match for my system.
Am pretty settled on Siltech - but will need to buy secondhand in order to get one of the crown series. A couple of bi-wire offerings are available, but having spent hours reading all your experiences with different cables and amplification - I don't recall any reference to bi-wiring - just an absence of it.
My amplifier is bi-wire-able and so are the speakers. Would be very grateful for your views on whether this is recommended. I see most users single wire and use jumpers.

Thank you,
 

TooCool4

Well-Known Member
Feb 7, 2013
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Personally I have never heard bi-wire work, bi-amping yes. Save your money and use jumpers.
 

Googaliser

VIP/Donor
Mar 31, 2019
60
80
240
Hi TooCool,

I have seen a pair of speakers cables I would like that have single termination amp-side and bi-wire termination speaker side. This would result in a single cable solution without jumpers. Just wondered about pros and cons and whether anyone was running a similar set-up.

Regards, Marc
 

Sablon Audio

Industry Expert, VIP Donor
May 22, 2015
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It is certainly possible to make internally biwired speaker cables with discrete wiring all the way back to the amplifier terminations. I would recommend using a smaller wire gauge / csa for the tweeter runs and this is the approach I take in my design. You may well find that the speaker designer has also done this internally.
 

TooCool4

Well-Known Member
Feb 7, 2013
960
939
925
England
Hi TooCool,

I have seen a pair of speakers cables I would like that have single termination amp-side and bi-wire termination speaker side. This would result in a single cable solution without jumpers. Just wondered about pros and cons and whether anyone was running a similar set-up.

Regards, Marc

I tried this long ago and found it to be a waste of money, I noticed nothing compared to the single + jumper route. I would only run cables like this if I had spare cable lying around, I would not go out of my way to buy bi-wire. You can always give it a try and hear for yourself as that is the only way you will truly know.
 

DaveC

Industry Expert
Nov 16, 2014
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It's really hard to say what'll work best without a lot of trial and error.

If you have a budget, it's possible you're best off with one better cable + jumpers vs 2 cables of lesser quality. However, with my cables it can also work well to use a reasonable priced copper cable for lows and a smaller gauge OCC silver/gold cable for highs, as heavier gauge OCC silver/gold cables get very expensive. In this case it's cheaper to biwire, but you may still get better results from a single heavier gauge cable of better quality, but for significantly more $. I also carry copper cables that are designed specifically for low and high frequencies, and are intended to be used as a biwire pair, but for many more efficient applications only using the tweeter wire works just fine and there's little advantage to biwire.

One of the main advantages of bi wiring is separation of em fields between bass and mid/high runs so the wires should be separate and not run parallel/touching, give them a few inches apart.

With jumpers, the configuration makes a difference with many finding a diagonal arrangement is best, so the speaker cable would have one pole going to highs and the other to lows. If you have jumpers this is worth experimenting with.
 
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Geert1962

Well-Known Member
Apr 18, 2014
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The Netherlands
Personally I have never heard bi-wire work, bi-amping yes. Save your money and use jumpers.
Indeed buy and use jumpers e.g. Audioquest Jupiter BiWire jumpers; in Europe they cost 470 Euro. Not very cheap but the best ypu can buy.
I use these jumpers on my Tad speakers (Evolution one) for over a year. According to me this is one the best tweaks.
 

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