I bought these speakers from the British Heart Foundation eBay shop:
 

 
I'd spotted on one of the listing's photos that each unit has two pairs of terminals on the back, so I did a bit of research into bi-wiring, and I'm guessing that these speakers can be bi-amped as well as bi-wired.
 
As far as bi-wiring goes, I can see there are two ways of connecting the speakers to my hi-fi amp:
 
#1 - I can leave the 'shorting' plates in place and connect using one speaker cable to each speaker:
 

 

 
#2 - I can remove the plates and connect each speaker using two speaker cables, presumably from common speaker outputs on the back of my amp:
 

 

 
 
In both methods, some part of each channel is 'common', in the first, this is at the speaker terminals, in the second it's at the amp's speaker outputs.
 
I'm tentatively assuming that method two is 'better', but apart from costing me twice as much in speaker cable, can anyone explain why?
 
Cheers

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.

Under normal circumstances you would only remove the shunts if you were intending to Bi-Amp the speakers using an active crossover then separate amps to drive the tweeters and the woofers.

The other thing to consider is removing the shunts may well change the impedance of the speaker system I would check your amp can deal with a lower impedance.
 
Also it would appear they need a good quality amp to drive them, something with good stable PSU's.
 
This link may prove informational.
 
Furry edit because I followed the wrong link myself.

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

The method is actually called Buy-Wiring.

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)

SteveStrummerUK
 
 I'm tentatively assuming that method two is 'better', but apart from costing me twice as much in speaker cable, can anyone explain why?
 
Cheers

UUUUhhhhhhh .... no.

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.

Here is a fun article (dated but still relevant) by Ethan Winer.  Yes, Ethan Winer has his detractors but I personally respect his opinion.   
 
http://ethanwiner.com/audiophoolery.html
 
... 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).

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.