Speaker jumper cables / diagonal wiring / worth trying

amey01 said:

I didn't know there were places on earth that could get that cold!!

PS. At +40C is when we think about discarding the sandals and throwing on a coat

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Adam, what's really crazy is that people actually live in those conditions. I remember one nasty morning many years ago when I was walking to work (20 minutes) in -20+ °C weather, and thinking, "I must be nuts living here"; I was born in the tropics!

Sorry for the thread hijack.

timm said:

Now the real question is the impact of the cold on your jumpers!! .

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Well, you can get cryo cables, so why not just keep them permanently cryoed?

Bernard said:

I remember one nasty morning many years ago when I was walking to work (20 minutes) in -20+ °C weather, and thinking, "I must be nuts living here"; I was born in the tropics!

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HAHA Bernard Our capital (Canberra) gets quite cold, and when visiting family a few years ago I remember one nasty morning it got below zero and my windscreen froze over. I didn't know what to do! (True story).

Interesting thread. So should I invest in a single wire with a jumper rather than a biwire - more bang for the buck?

If yes, try jumpers and wire from the same company?

In order for jumpers and wires not to clash at the point of fixing, have one as spades and one as bananas?

bonzo said:

Interesting thread. So should I invest in a single wire with a jumper rather than a biwire - more bang for the buck?

If yes, try jumpers and wire from the same company?

In order for jumpers and wires not to clash at the point of fixing, have one as spades and one as bananas?

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Unfortunately my jumpers and wires are not from the same company, but my home-made jumpers are terminated with lockable bananas that take bare wire that is screwed into the connector.

Hi bonzo,

To your questions, I would say:

1) Perhaps. Depends on the cost of the wire, of course. Certainly, bi-wiring should out perform jumpers but the big question is by how much.

2) Yes. Will maintain the tonal signature of that particular wire manufacturer from top to bottom. This assumes you like their particular sound. In my case, I use DH Labs but the speaker wire is their "Q10 Signature", which is copper based. The jumper wire is their top silver based called the "Deity", which is extremely expensive and beyond my financial means. See 1) above.

3) Yes. The idea is to avoid any spade - spade connect on the same speaker terminal, which I believe compromises the integrity of the signal transfer from amp to speaker. "Z posts" are an alternative to locking banana plugs.

Hope that helps. Of course, YMMV.

GG

Gordon Gray said:

Certainly, bi-wiring should out perform jumpers but the big question is by how much.

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Hmmm. Some time ago I switched back to single wire and good jumpers with my summits. I did not manage to get it really working with bi-wire. Tried a number of different biwire cables even in the very expensive price range and always had some slight hum an "grainy" sound as if there were some distortion. Single wire sounded much clearer. I think there must be a reason why ML does not more provide biwire terminals with the "X" besides of optimizing costs.

Also followed Gordons tweak and now connected speaker cables (+) to the upper right esl post and (-) to the lower left. Definitely worth a try. Bass gets more coherent without the esl loosing clarity. I will stay with that. Not just a minor improvement but a big step forward.

Johann

Gordon Gray said:

3) Yes. The idea is to avoid any spade - spade connect on the same speaker terminal, which I believe compromises the integrity of the signal transfer from amp to speaker.

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This is precisely why I went from bi-wire to single wire with jumpers. I was using spade-spade on the back of my old ARC monoblocks, which have terminal blocks, and was never happy with the connection. I could, of course, have soldered the wires to a single spade, but try to fit two Cardas cables into a single small spade!

There is also the option of opening up the speaker and soldering jumpers internally.

Gordon, on another matter - have you tried Mpingo discs? Based upon what I heard at Roberto's, they are worth investigating, but rather expensive.