Bi-wiring RT5000 series

[samplesj]

I am a total newbie at this even though I've had the system for a while. I let the sales person pick my cables before. If anyone has any comments about other wire choices or options I would be glad to hear them. I do have a limit of at most $600 this round of upgrades though and unfortunately my rears had around 50' of cable each.

I'm in the process of rearranging my home theater and I've noticed I need to replace all of my speaker cables. I was using the thicker Monster cables that Circuit City sells with the fronts and center and the thinner Monster XP for the rears. I've got an RMA and I'm sending them in to be replaced since they have strange brownish spots on them. I am thinking about selling them later and using this as a chance to upgrade my speaker cabling.

Now I had seen several positive comments about Signal Cable so I was looking at his site and saw that Bi-Wiring will not be that much more so I was thinking about giving it a try. I have a couple of questions first though.

1. RT3000p speakers are two part. If I bi-wire will I have to feed the sub base via pre amp jacks on my speakers and feed the top two connectors from the amp posts? Is it possible (or even if it is possible is it stupid) to use the cable jumper to connect the lower speaker posts on the top from the bottom's top speaker post. If this was possible then I could bi-wire by feeding the top post on the top and the bottom post on the bottom and chaining them together.

2. CS1000p manual seems to imply it is pointless to bi-wire. If you feed from pre amp out for sub then only the top is used off of posts. Would it be possible (or stupid) to bi-wire this speaker so you didn't need to feed pre amp out?

3. FX1000 seems to be easy enough to understand so I don't have any questions :)

4. These speakers are being feed by an Onkyo TX-DS777. It has pre amp outs, but the manual mentions that I should turn off speaker set A when using it. Does anyone know if that means that its an either/or situation. If its not an either/or then I'll be feeding the subs with pre amp out, but if not, well that is why I asked about bridging the sub in bi-wiring.

5. Signal Cable offers both single cable bi-wire (he uses cable with more than 4 connectors) and two run shotgun bi-wire. If I am going to bi-wire is it worth it to step up to shotgun.

Thank you for wading through so many questions at once.

Jeremy

[gidrah]

Welcome to the forum!

I'll skip to # 5 and let the others fill in the rest.

While I've often suggested SignalCable (while letting it be known that I don't actually own any), for your level of gear and $ alocated I'd suggest looking into something shielded or at least braided or star-quad twisted. Then again they do look nice. They would most definately benefit me. I'm just cheap. It's much more cost effective to "plan" for the upgrade (which never happens) than to actually do it.

Ask Frank over at Signal if his shotgun cables if each run separates hi & low, or pos & neg. I would assume the latter would be better.

While I'm not familiar with our Onkyo I'll say this. If the pre-outs are there and your speakers have the amps, let each one do their job. Run a dedicated circuit for your rig and all the plugs and just pay the bill. If not you will either underplay your rig or have been over sold. This depends on your room and tastes.

Good luck!

BTW - I'm listening to 4 watt speakers in my main rig right now. Just to give you an idea on how far I'm reaching.

[samplesj]

I was looking at the amp again and I think I'm going to try running both the preamp out and speaker set A.

Does anyone have any good suggestions for sub interconnects. Do the left and right channels need to be the same length like for speaker cable?

Thank you Gidrah for the suggestions.

My local shop is not really sold on mid range cable. They like the really high end stuff (1000/m), but told me to stick with just plain heavy gauge if I wasn't going to hit that high.

I going to try to find the best deal I can for the front and center on ebay or audiogon, but I think I've decide to use 2 runs of plain 12 gauge in wall for the back.

Anyone else have any suggestions.

Thank you all and Polk for such a great resource.