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Bi-Wiring Large Advents


Guest Whitehall

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Guest Whitehall

Just brought home a nice pair of walnut Large Advents. They've been refoamed (I'm told) and look and sound clean (at least in the guy's garage where I bought them.)

My questions to you gurus out there are:

1) how difficult is it to bi-wire these speakers

2) do you think it worth the trouble?

3) are speaker stands a good idea or can I just set them on the carpet?

Thanks,

Whitehall

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Guest russwollman

If you want to biwire them, you'll have go inside them to separate the components and install additional connectors for the wires.

It could be done, but unless you'll have separate amplification for the two sound ranges, I don't think it's worth it. I had Linn Tukans which were set up for biwiring, and though I didn't have dedicated amplification, I did run two pairs of wires to them from my receiver. I never noticed much improvement, but...

After I bought a pair of Advents on a whim, and restored them with—and I recommend this highly—new tweeters and capacitors from Layne Audio, I liked them so much that I sold the Tukans and a costly Velodyne sub, bought another pair of Advents and restored them, found a used 150w/ch NAD 2600 and set up a double Advent system, wiring them in parallel, and there I stopped. It's a wonderful system with a lot of power & ability, and I just enjoy the music.

On each side, the bottom speaker is on the floor, woofer down, and the top speaker is oriented woofer up. The powerful NAD gets the job done very well. A good amp will make a big difference. NAD 2600s appear regularly on eBay and are apparently well regarded. I use a NAD C740 receiver as my preamp.

I went to the fancy audio store recently to hear what princely sums would buy, some Martin Logan electrostatics which were very good. I didn't have the stomach to ask what was driving them. I didn't miss them at all when I returned home.

The Double Advent system is very satisfying. You get an awful lot for very little...

Steve at Layne Audio can be hard to reach, but if you call (615-298-4124) soon after he opens at 11:00AM central time, you can get some tweeters and capacitors. They will do much more for the sound than biwiring, I think, and the installation is simple. The new tweeter's larger magnet requires only a minor enlargement of the existing cabinet opening, but I chose to rout the opening so the new tweeters' mounting plate would fit just slightly below the level of the front baffle, which allows decent clearance between the tweeter dome and the grille cloth.

Boy, I hope I didn't throw a wrench in your works. But if I did, you can always try something creative of your own, or better advice from someone who's done the biwiring modifications.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest easyrider

agree with russwollman completely and would like to add the following:

if Double Advents are equal to almost any speaker system in this planet, try Quad Advents. an audiophile friend taught me how to connect two integrated amplifiers together to play FOUR pairs of advents.

i used a sansui au-717 for the "master amp", the source (cd player) was connected to this sansui. then connected two advent pairs to the speaker outs.

next, i patched a yamaha ca-1010 "slave amp" from the au-717's "record out" to the ca-1010's "aux". another advent pair was hooked up to his 1010. i can control each amp's functions independently. perhaps my terms "master and slave amp" are misnomers but have used them for lack of a better term.

i can even use the same cd player to listen using only the slave yamaha 1010, sansui au-717 switched off.

i placed the au-717's speakers on top of one another, woofer to tweeter. positioned them about 8 feet apart, center to center.

the yamaha's speakers were stacked the same way but 13 feet apart.

the speaker stacks were toed-in to point directly to my sweet spot lazy boy which is about 15 feet in front of the speaker array.

i have always loved listening to double advents. QUAD advents have turned me into a Kloss disciple and an pure adventophile to the exclusion of all other speaker makes.

the beauty of having a quad set-up is that, depending on your mood or type of music, you can "tune" the sound by cutting-in or cutting-out pairs of speakers. you will hear the imaging, spaciousness and depth, detail, transparency of tube amps without all the expense...plus you have the power that two classic powerhouse amps can deliver.

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