Bi-wiring Loudspeakers - a quick question for the hi-fi/electronics buffs.

Actually there is no difference in the two methods you've shown and they should sound exactly the same. You've replaced the jumpers with another piece of wire back to the amp. Having the two sets of inputs connected together puts the upper and lower inputs in parallel as a common load. If you remove the jumpers then you decouple the two inputs and each speaker becomes two loads, each with its own impedance that will be higher than when coupled.
 
You could bi-amp the speakers or wire them back to multiple outputs from one amp. ie, Speaker out 1 feeds the top half and output 2 feeds the bottom half. I suppose this could be useful if you wanted to run a sub and not use the bass drivers in the towers.

Yep.  The Wookiee is (now ) on the right path.  Very cool looking speakers Steve!  I'm jealous. 

craigb
Yep.  The Wookiee is (now ) on the right path.  Very cool looking speakers Steve!  I'm jealous. 

Can I please state for the record that I had my annual Retinal Screening done today which means I have blurred vision due to the exceptionally painful drops they put in the eyes to dilate the pupils thus enabling them to get a good picture of ones retina.

They do like nice though I like my EPOS ES 14's (Pre the buy out by Mordant Short)

It depends.
 
If you are an audiophool, you definitely want to do the bi-wiring (make sure the cables you use are optimized for this application and oriented in the proper direction!!!!) .
 
If you care about actual audio more than imaginary nonsense that you can brag to your friends about, skip the bi-wiring and just run some decent gauge wire.

quantumeffect
... oh, and if you go the buy-wiring route I have some little bridges to sell you.  They lift your wire off of the carpet minimize the effect of the carpet to act as a capacitor (I kid you not, it is an actual product).

And make sure you wear an audiophile grade tin foil hat to prevent your thought waves from causing subtle electromagnetic noise to get into your system.
 
Of course this is only necessary if you're really, really smart. Most people's brains can neither cause nor perceive a difference.

Jeff Evans
drew I think you are belittling the hi fi enthusiast a little too much. I have come from that whole scene many years ago and yes while I do agree that sometimes they do get a little over enthusiastic about silly things such as cables etc I also learned a lot from the time spent being with these people, AB testing a lot of interesting things and most of all really hearing what perfection sounds like from a very early point in my career. Much of that has translated today into what I am doing now producing and mixing etc.. I have an amazing reference point in my head and a lot of it has come from hearing such greatness way back then.
 

From a technical perspective, bi-wiring (we're not talking bi-amping here, but bi-wiring) is idiotic. It's exists because of the understandable technical ignorance of people who lack a technical background (i.e. most people) and a desire take advantage of people who can be fooled by easily debunked technical claims, rhetoric and unreliable testimonial "evidence" that fails to produce the same results under any type of proper objective testing.
 
If you care about real, actual audio, and not your own pretensions or whatever, then you must rely on objective testing to determine whether something makes a real difference or not. Because the sad reality is that the audio world - sadly both consumer and pro - is full of misinformation, misunderstanding and downright bogus claims (like what I'm guessing some of Steve's well intended research into bi-wiring revealed).
 
In the pro world, Bob Katz actually seems to do his due diligence and managed to write an entire book that didn't have any of the common misunderstandings and misinformation regarding digital audio, but he is by far an exception. Many well respected professionals can barely write a sentence without repeating some easily disproved myth. Note that this doesn't mean they aren't great engineers - they just don't understand what's going on under the hood and it would be better for everyone if they either just didn't talk about such things or if they did what Katz would do and talk to a DSP guy (or whoever) first.
 
The problem is, when someone makes a preposterous claim and someone like me calls them on it, often the result is I am accused of not "caring", or "appreciating" high end audio, or not being able to tell the difference (often in a most pretentious tone). Of course this is nonsense when the thing they claim to be hearing can't possibly be there, and this can easily be proven through relatively simple objective tests of both the quantitative and listening variety. Unfortunately any objective test results are more difficult for a non technical person to understand, so they tend to be discounted for listening claims that everyone can understand. This does a severe disservice to the many newbs lurking, who often fear that they can't hear something not because it isn't there (or just even might not be), but because their ears or monitors or whatever aren't good enough: "So, gee, even if I can't hear it and this one guy who was talking about a bunch of stuff I don't understand says it might not even be possible for it to be there, well these other guys say they can hear it and it makes a big difference and, so just in case, I better - how much does it cost?"
 
So if people thought they might publicly embarrass themselves by making downright silly pronouncements (as they often do - they just don't ever realize it ), well maybe some of them would bother to spend 10 minutes doing an ABX test before they start making ridiculous claims. 
 
 
To someone like me, who cares about actual audio, if there is an objectively real difference, then, hey great, how much does it cost? I can decide if it's worth spending whatever it costs for it. Please don't mistake my skepticism for potentially questionable things and outright disdain for clearly bogus things as a lack of appreciation for objectively superior quality. Some stuff does indeed make an objectively noticible difference and is worth investing in.
 
Unfortunately too many of your "enthusiasts" are too ignorant (not necessarily because of any fault on their part), too lazy to test, too gullible or they just don't really care about audio as much as they are using pretending to care about audio to facilitate their own pathetic needs to feel superior. 
 
It's not hard to learn to do objective testing - the biggest difficulty seems to be that one has to be willing to accept the results whichever way they fall. It's odd to me, but for some reason people get really emotionally attached to things like sample rate or bit depth when it's really just a number. If we need a bigger number for whatever reason (or better cables, etc.), well there you go. Smaller number - hey, great. It's just a number. The question is what are the differences, if any (!), and when might they apply - always?, really only for test tones? or in what subset of real world conditions?

 
Thanks for the great info and the interesting discussion gents
 
Taking on board what's been said, and having read that excellent Ethan Winer article Dave linked to, I'll be going with Method #1 - I.e. using one cable per speaker.
 
Mind you, having said that, I do have a spare hi-fi amp, and I'd love to give the bi-amping method a go some time. Would it be just a case of using RCA phono lead splitters to send the (identical) signal to each amp, and then EQ-ing them according to which drivers they are feeding?
 
For example, I currently play CDs on my PC. To hear them through my hi-fi amp/speakers I have the Left and Right Line Outs of my PC's soundcard (Line 6 TonePort UX2) connected to a pair of RCA phono inputs on my amp (each lead has a phono plug at one end and a ¼" jack plug at the other).
 
Adding another power amp to this set-up, does this method make sense?
 

 

Two amps for separate speaker hookup, and then - crossovers.
Or perhaps different ohmage hooking up the speakers.
 

 
 
Many thanks for the extra info guys.
 
Jeff, you'll be glad to hear that I'm not planning on mixing through them. I actually wanted a pair of floor-standers to use with my TV; I'm so fed up with listening to the next-to-useless rear-facing speakers in my set that I decided I wanted something a bit better. The TV speakers' lack of any bass response and overall low quality mean I generally end up wearing headphones when I'm watching a music DVD or Blu-ray.
 
I did my research on these before I bid on them, so I knew I wasn't getting quality hi-fi standard speakers, but they have to be better than the drivers in my TV, and they're just the right height!
 
My hi-fi amps are a newish 30W (RMS) per channel cheapo Cambridge Audio (which is my spare), and my beloved old Pioneer (bought in 1981) which is rated at 65W per channel. It's the Pioneer I plan to use as it's certainly got the oomph and it sounds better to my ears than the Cambridge.
 
Based on all the great advice you guys have shared here, I've decided to plump with the basic single amp, non-bi-wired set-up for the time being. Now I know what I'll need, I'll go and get some speaker cable and the connectors tomorrow.
 
 

 
Here's a stock photo of my old amp Jeff, it's one of the Pioneer 'Silver & Blue' range. My memory must be going because I've done a bit of research and apparently it came out in 1982, not 81, and it's rated at 45W RMS per channel, not 65W. Mind you, I can't ever remember needing to turn up much past '3' in the past!
 

 
 
Incidentally, I took your advice and got a stereo 3.5mm plug → twin phono plug lead to connect the amp to my TV's headphone out.
 
Now to wire it all up

craigb
But is bi-wiring genetic or a defect??? 
(J/K - Don't twist your TOS all up in a bunch.  )

 
 It's not a TOS anymore.
 
It's a COC.
 
I have to abide quite strictly by the COC in case I upset the Gestapo forum hosts
 
So now I've always got COC on my mind....
 
Oh yes, I'm pretty big on the COC.
 
 
 
 
And I didn't get the bi-wiring/genetic 'joke' I'm afraid 
 

 
Ah, I see now.
 
I was probably too focussed on the COC to get the joke

In 1976 I announced that I was bicentennial. My mother continued to accept me for who I am.
 
BTW, Drew, great post (#12). You should paste that into a text file so you don't have to waste time when one of these subjects comes up next month and every month thereafter. Paste it into the latest sample rate thread if you haven't already (I haven't read the thread). I know, I should have congratulated you on that post 3 days ago but I've been out of the loop for awhile, and anyway you seem to be doing alright without any backup.
 
My experience with bi-amping is that it's a great way to upgrade your system: once you've destroyed your tweeters you can then justify better replacements.

bitflipper
BTW, Drew, great post (#12). You should paste that into a text file so you don't have to waste time when one of these subjects comes up next month and every month thereafter.  

Thanks.
 
I actually was going to respond to Jeff with, let's say, a less nuanced reply. But I decided that he was likely confusing the audiophile from back in the day when the differences in gear were far more pronounced with the modern audiophool I was mocking, who has rejected any and all objective testing and will enthusiastically embrace even silly stuff like audiophile power cords and digital cables as long as it costs a whole lot more.