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Re: Audio Note Oto SE Bi-wire not possible??

Two amps are needed to bi amp but you can bi wire with one amp.

The best connection type depends upon the binding posts, the wire and your needs.

For convenience of connecting and disconnecting, it is hard to beat banana plugs provided the posts at each end are set up for them. (Most modern equipment is) They make it quick and easy to try different component and cable combinations. Good (not necessarily expensive) banana plugs make good electrical contact and it is easy to periodically clean and remake the connection.

I have not used spade clips but some people swear by them. I would be concerned that with hand tightening, the large contact area may result in insufficient pressure to provide a good gas-tight connection.

A bare wire through a hole in a binding post provides a good gas-tight electrical connection when the outer collar is tightened down. It is however a bit more messy to handle if you connect and disconnect frequently. In addition, the hole in the post may not be large enough to handle all kinds of speaker wire, particularly if you are bi wiring.

Soldering the bare wires together makes them tidier and easier to handle but I have noticed that the joint tends to loosen over time. Even if the connection is initially extremely tight, I find that after a relatively short time I can easily tighten it further and often hear an improvement in sound when I do so. I suspect that the solder slowly flows under pressure and a joint that is initially gas tight does not remain so. For this reason, I now avoid soldered ends.

Audio Note equipment sounds very good together and I believe a lot of work goes into achieving this. In view of this, I would initially try speaker cables that are similar in design to Audio Note cables. Fortunately, this gives you a very inexpensive option to check if bi-wiring seems to improve things. Cat 5 cable as used in computer networks is very inexpensive and is readily available. Like many of the expensive Audio Note cables, it contains multiple separately insulated conductors. To match the typical Audio Note setup I have seen, I would strip and twist all the conductors together at each end and use the cat 5 cable as if it were a single conductor.

Initially, I would run a single Cat 5 cable from the red terminal on the amp to the two red terminals on the speaker and similarly for the black terminals. (I would just clamp the bare wires in the terminals). While listening to how that sounded, I would cut and strip the ends for a second set of cables and then hook those up so that I could compare the sound. Once I had decided whether single wiring or bi wiring sounded better, I would compare it to Audio Note cables and decide whether I heard a difference that justified spending the extra money.

Once I had finalized what I was going to go with, I would fit banana plugs on the ends as I cnage things around all the time but if it was for someone who was just going to leave it alone, I might just use bare wires.

Good luck! I hope that this has helped.

Regards

David

PS Do you also have AN speakers?



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