How to Bi-wire speakers with an Onkyo SR-500 (1 Viewer)

[Scott McC.@home]

Hello, my current setup is a pair of Paradigm Mini Monitors, driven by an Onkyo SR-500. I plan on stepping up to the studio line bit by bit, and I figured that the best way to start is to buy a center channel. Unfortunately, the Studio-CC is configured for bi-wiring (4 inputs), and I have no idea how to rig it up to my reciever. BTW, if this should be in the n00b forum, my apologies, but I assumed bi-wiring to be fairly advanced, and came here.

 

[Chu Gai]

well the first thing is to remove the connection between the terminals on the speaker. Then you're going to hook up two sets of wires to each terminal on your receiver or amp. paying attention to plusses and minuses, you're going to run the two sets of wires to the terminals on the speaker. plus to plus, minus to minus. make sense?
btw, you don't have to biwire them.

 

[Scott McC.@home]

why would you not have to bi-wire them? which set of inputs would you use then?

 

[Chu Gai]

shouldn't matter since the strap or whatever Paradigm uses is connecting both sets of terminals.
biwiring is somewhat of a debateable subject to say the least. so now you're going to ask, why do they put them on if it is debateable that it does anything? answer: it's cheap to do and doesn't alienate those who want to biwire or passively biamp. it's a business decision.

 

[John Garcia]

IMO, running Studios off an SR-500 is asking for blown tweeters.

As Chu said, there is a jumper on the speaker already, you only need to connect one set of wires. I will say that I could definitely hear a difference when I bi-wired my Mordaunt Short 902s, so I have to say it is beneficial, however if you are running both sets of drivers from a single amplifier channel, you are not gaining as much as if you had a dedicated channel for the mids and highs. You will likely see the same amount of improvement by simply swapping out the jumper that comes with the speaker to a short run of the speaker wire you are using.

 

[Chu Gai]

Hey John, every try that little experiment on biwiring I posted sometime back?

 

[John Garcia]

No, I may have missed that, could you tell me again?

 

[Chu Gai]

Bottom of this link.

 

[ChrisAG]

I could definitely hear a difference when I bi-wired my Mordaunt Short 902s

John, we must have similar brain activity when it comes to purchasing equipment... I also have MS 902s (for rears, and 906s for fronts), the Marantz 6200, and Sony 222ES... you don't also happen to have a Ford Probe GT, do you

 

[John Garcia]

Well, you seemed very pleased with the 902s with the 6200, so I thought I'd check them out, and I am very happy with them in my 2ch system. The scary thing is, I was thinking about moving to 906s for mains and a 905C center and 902 or 912 rears in my HT.

I sold the 6200, and I've been running in my 8300 for the past 2 weeks.

No, no Ford Probe...

No Chu, I still haven't tried the experiment.

 

[ChrisAG]

The 906s are great, but they like a lot of power to sound their best. The 6200 drives them okay, but at the dealer's 2-ch. demo room they were being driven by separates, probably Anthem, and produced astounding bass. Me and the other customer there thought a subwoofer was being used - there wasn't.

I have an Adire Rava to help out for HT (with the Mordaunt-Shorts set to Small), but just the 906s for 2-ch. (Source Direct).

 

[John Garcia]

Hehe, so we do have a difference or two...I have an HSU VTF-2.

I picked up the 8300 which is the first Marantz I've heard without the audio delay! (9300 also). I also moved, and the 6200 was not meeting my needs in my new, larger room, and the 7300 was not enough of an improvement, so I went for the greater power of the 8300.