Biwire versus high quality jumpers

[amey01]

I don't think it is a good analogy either. Because by the time people have spent money on the chip, the worry, the installation, and all the other associated paraphernalia, they could have bought the next model up that 430 HP!

 

[bluenote56]

II saw a recent thread where someone said that his Summits Bass is compromised by bi-wire cables and the bass sounds better with a single cable. I must confess I hate my Summit's bass. I always attributed it to my enormous room but am intrigued by the possibility that maybe it's the wire? I am going to de-lazy myself one of these days and test this hypothesis.

Any thoughts from the experts or from the gentleman who had originally started the "Summits should not be bi-wired" thread?

Hello - it's me who started this thread some time ago..

I've tried out different cables, bi-wired and single wired (with jumpers made out from the same cable) and yes: bass seems to be less to almost not present, but imaging and accuracy improves. In addition, my summits showed distortions at higher frequencies, especially when running via Neutriks Speakonflex wires, which do perfect on my other "conventional" setups (e.g. an Integrated Tube amp and a pair of Triangle Stella's).

Meanwhile i did further investigations. My personal experience is: there is no other speaker i've ever owned that reacts that sensible to speaker wires than the summits. Especially in terms of bass !! The whole thing depends on speaker cables.

Finally, I ended up with Van den Hul's "The Teatrack" and since then I am happy with bi-wiring. Smooth mids, perfectly timed and heavy bass. Crystal clear and no distortions at all.

Another point is footing. I have a wooden floor and I never got the Summits working perfectly when spiked. I got best results when using just the flat side of the provided ETC spike. Bass response got boomy and slow when spiked. I know, this is somewhat against basics of physics, but works best in my environment.

Br
Johann

 

[amey01]

Another point is footing. I have a wooden floor and I never got the Summits working perfectly when spiked. I got best results when using just the flat side of the provided ETC spike. Bass response got boomy and slow when spiked. I know, this is somewhat against basics of physics, but works best in my environment.

Not at all! Flat footing worked best in my (carpeted on concrete slab) room as well. I don't know why.

What I will say though is why won't ML supply three (instead of four) feet - it would make balancing and firm placement so much easier!

 

[adanny]

My personal experience is: there is no other speaker i've ever owned that reacts that sensible to speaker wires than the summits. Especially in terms of bass !! The whole thing depends on speaker cables.

Finally, I ended up with Van den Hul's "The Teatrack" and since then I am happy with bi-wiring. Smooth mids, perfectly timed and heavy bass. Crystal clear and no distortions at all.

Br
Johann

Thanks Johann. I agree with your flat versus spike point. I also ended up flat footed on my Summits for the same reason.

Intrigued by the cable point and cant wait to test in my system. I have a few new cables coming and have a few old, cheap ones which I will test on my summits and MBLs in the coming weeks.

Anyone have the theory on why this might be true? Why would electrostats, especially Summits, be so speaker wire sensitive especially in Bass? And so sensitive to bi-wiring versus regular wiring.

Justin - can you comment on what MLs experience has been in your lab tests? Perhaps this is why the Summit X does not have biwiring capability. i.e. the possibility of TOO wide a range of customer experience was taken out.

 

[slowGEEZR]

Hello - it's me who started this thread some time ago..

I've tried out different cables, bi-wired and single wired (with jumpers made out from the same cable) and yes: bass seems to be less to almost not present,
Br
Johann

Johann, this statement tells me a whole lot. Yes, you will get minor differences with cabling techniques, spikes, etc., but to say you have bass "almost not present" due to some of these techniques doesn't make sense to me. It sounds (reads) to me that you have a null at your listening position. Do you have any bass traps on your front wall corners? A set of bass traps will have, on an order of magnitude, much more influence on bass response than any of the techniques you have described, IMO.

 

[David Matz]

I don't think that is a good analogy - there are legitimate measurable performance gains in your scenario.

Cables and measurements - i think we need to start a another new thread. (Just kidding!!)

 

[David Matz]

I don't think it is a good analogy either. Because by the time people have spent money on the chip, the worry, the installation, and all the other associated paraphernalia, they could have bought the next model up that 430 HP!

I think the difference in price between engine sizes for these vehicles is in the neighborhood of $10K-$20K, depending on the brand. (I think the difference is about $10K for BMW to go from 535 to 550 sedan. For Audi, one has to cough up about $20k to move from an A6 to an S6.) Spending an extra $2500 is smaller in comparison. But will the end user actually perceive this small boost in horsepower, or will he be as happy as a clam at that high point of performance and luxury (or sound in our case), regardless of the actual increase in horsepower?


I think you and I are making the same point, though. Does the enhanced experience from a fairly small tweak worth it, or should one just spend more money on the bigger item, which may be the weaker link and add more to the overall experience.

 

[bluenote56]

Johann, this statement tells me a whole lot. Yes, you will get minor differences with cabling techniques, spikes, etc., but to say you have bass "almost not present" due to these some of these techniques doesn't make sense to me. It sounds (reads) to me that you have a null at your listening position. Do you have any bass traps on your front wall corners? A set of bass traps will have, on an order of magnitude, much more influence on bass response than any of the techniques you have described, IMO.

I think, you got me wrong. Meanwhile, I resolved this issue by means of a perfect matching bi-wiring speaker cable. Now, there is plenty of bass and it is very well defined. This is the only change I did. Also the speaker position remained unchanged.

With other cables it was as described: bi-wired there was almost no bass. The woofer drivers did make very small movements. It seemed to me, as if the built in ICE modules did not start and there was no amplification at all. Even turning the Midrange and Woofers volume controls to max did not significantly increase lower frequencies levels.

Of course, I tried to "restart" the ICE´s by unplugging mains and reconnecting after half a minute. Did not help.

I must admit, that this all may sound very strange. But I´m not a newbie had CLS-es since 87. But this issue with my Summits almost drove me crazy.

I´m very happy to have this issue resolved, even if I have no technical explanation for.

 

[adanny]

How did you decide on the Van Den Hul Teatrack? Must have taken an insane amount of in-house testing! That isnt one of the most well known cables here in the US. I couldnt even find a dealer in the US after some internet searching...may try one out if I can find some short 1-2 feet runs somewhere

 

[bluenote56]

How did you decide on the Van Den Hul Teatrack? Must have taken an insane amount of in-house testing! That isnt one of the most well known cables here in the US. I couldnt even find a dealer in the US after some internet searching...may try one out if I can find some short 1-2 feet runs somewhere

Oh yes! Hours after hours. But it was worth it.

I´ve used VdH interconnects since the very beginning. I always was affected by the total "silence" (sorry, no better term for this), warmth and big imaging of Mr. den Hul´s carbon-fibre cables. Ok, some do not like them because they are not as "brilliant" (I may say harsh) as ordinary metal based cables. But an ESL has excellent heights, so this effect is compensated and I don´t miss anything. Must say, this depends also on the components in use, but my Krell likes them.

Actually, I run VdH "The First Ultimate" and "The Second" (RCA and XLR) interconnects and ever was curious about VdH´s speaker cables. If they would have the same characteristics as the interconnects, this could be an improvement. "The Teatrack" sounded very promising, because it is a carbon/silver-plated-OFC-copper hybrid and VdH´s biggest quadruple-lead speaker cable.

So, I gave it a try and it did exactly what i expected. Sounds perfect. VdH is definitely a "Guru". Btw a very nice person, too.

 

[Len44]

You could be right, of course. But there is also always a possibility of a real, but small improvement. Take a case of a German, sports sedan. The thing has 330 hp. Most people, when they press on the gas pedal, crap in their pants, as the car takes off like a rocket. Good enough for most people!

Briefly OT, and no intention to offend, but...

The phrase "Throttle tip-in" as used by Car and Driver Magazine (as if it were a good thing), to describe the overly-touchy accelerator pedal on a certain German sports sedan was always good for a laugh. THAT would probably be the first thing I would modify should I decide to acquire such a vehicle...

 

[slowGEEZR]

I think, you got me wrong. Meanwhile, I resolved this issue by means of a perfect matching bi-wiring speaker cable. Now, there is plenty of bass and it is very well defined. This is the only change I did. Also the speaker position remained unchanged.

With other cables it was as described: bi-wired there was almost no bass. The woofer drivers did make very small movements. It seemed to me, as if the built in ICE modules did not start and there was no amplification at all. Even turning the Midrange and Woofers volume controls to max did not significantly increase lower frequencies levels.


I´m very happy to have this issue resolved, even if I have no technical explanation for.

This is most curious indeed! To think that bass output would go from "almost no bass (very small cone movements)" to "perfect" bass with just a cable swap is pretty wild. I know that I once used some flat wire by Monster Cable many years ago with my Aerius and had worse bass with that wire than any other type I've ever used, but there was still bass. That speaker cable happened to consist of hundreds of very fine wire and I believe that it has been mentioned on occasion that that is not the best type of speaker wire to use with electrostatics.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Hi all,

First off, thank all of you for your input on my question.

Also like the way it's morphed into a different area, one of those being to spike or not to spike.

Let me go back a couple of years when my friend Rich came to visit. At that time, I had my Summits spiked directly into my wood floor. One could certainly "feel" notes vibrating through the floor, even though my floor is well attached to the floor joists. More "perceived" low end body and weight, you bet.

Rich commented, after the visit, that in his opinion, the low end bass was a bit bloaty and ill defined. Trusting Rich's observations, I bought the BDR pucks, which I installed between the spikes and the floor.

Result was a much better defined mid / low bass. Also, improvement in imaging, three dimensionality, and clarity in the mids and highs. I could no longer detect the low end "traveling" through my wood floor.

So for me, spiking has always offered a better experience. Although I have no doubt that those who use the "flat" side of the spike prefer that sound, this is totally contrary to what I have experienced over the years.

Thanks again for all the comments. And like Steve, I don't understand the dramatic impact on bass energy output with different cables with the Summits. Maybe, I've been lucky.

Best,

Gordon