What would be the advantage of biwiring from the same amp?
The thought is to take advantage of cable differences. If you have one speaker cable that sounds great on the highs but wimpy on the bass, place that on the top end and the opposite, if you have it, on the bottom end.
Many believe separating the bass signal from the treble is of benefit. The bass energy carried within the same single cable allegedly adversely impacts upper frequencies. Bi-wiring avoids this as the cable carrying higher frequencies no longer also carry the EMF fields resulting form the high current needed to reproduce bass frequencies.
Being new to home HiFi, yet coming from 15+yrs car audio retail, I have a question on this bi-wire. Full-range signal sent to amplifier channel, then amplified & sent to speaker. The signal is still full-range until the signal hits the speaker or passive X-over, where it is then decided whether frequencies are split. How does having two conduits/pairs of wire after amplification, yet before X-over, separate bass & treble??
You’re right that it doesn’t make much sense because yes, the full range signal travels down both - almost. The crossover is in the speaker and that means that current being drawn is specific to the driver (a crossover is always presented with the full signal but the actual wattage used is specific only to the frequencies let in by the crossover). Thus current flow is only for the range of treble or bass and some cables sound better at lower or higher frequencies.
I find it helpful to understand that the signal is merely available on the wire, but no current is flowing unless needed by the receiving bit of kit.
For example, connecting an amplifier’s output to a subwoofer’s high-level input is essentially invisible to the amplifier as so little current is needed for the subwoofer to sense the signal.
This is like a tiny 2W light bulb plugged directly into the wall. Even though a whopping 1,800W is available (120V system with a 15 amp fuse) - which would vaporize the 2W bulb - the bulb only “requests” 2W and gently lights.
This is the same for bi-wiring, no low frequencies travel down the cable which is supplying the tweeter, and vice versa.
Also keep in mind that in a bi-wiring setup, there are jumpers on the back of the speaker which are removed when bi-wiring. Once removed, there are a pair of connectors which go only to the tweeter and a pair which only go to the woofer. This keeps the low and high frequency signals separate.