Bi-wiring my onkyo 5009?

You want to biwire six speakers? What speakers do you have?

I want to bi-wire rx6 main fronts and rx1s front heights and rx1s front wides

Beautiful speakers but Im not sure how you would make biwiring that many speakers practical. Hopefully someone will pipe up and advise you further.

Bi-wiring has no effect on the number of channels. You just run 2 wires from the amp out to the speaker so that woofer and tweeter are separately powered by the same amp channel. Many people swear by it. Many others (myself included) consider it a waste of wire. Bi-amping, on the other hand, will impact your available channels unless you have a stack of external amps at your disposal.

I Googled the 5009 to check a few things; according to the info I found it is a 9.2 AVR, so I'm not sure how you plan on doing 11.1. Perhaps I got the wrong receiver in my search?? :scratch:

Also, I remember researching a similar question (bi-wiring with Onkyo AVR) and the AVR was able to bi-wire the mains OR add 2 channels for 9.1; you can't do both. Basically, you can route the L/R mains signal to the amps that are used for the "extra" channels (height/width) OR use those amps for height or width.

The AVR that I found was this one; Onkyo may have changed some things OR it may be the wrong AVR. If I have the wrong AVR from my internet search, please let me know. I'll be happy to see if I can find more info.

I agree with what has been said above about bi-wire, its not worth the hassle. There will be no audible difference in what you hear. I have been running my livingroom speakers (see signature) in bi-amp mode and cant hear any difference between that and how I had it before. Just make sure your using at least 14awg wire and enjoy.

tonyvdb said:

I agree with what has been said above about bi-wire, its not worth the hassle. There will be no audible difference in what you hear. I have been running my livingroom speakers (see signature) in bi-amp mode and cant hear any difference between that and how I had it before. Just make sure your using at least 14awg wire and enjoy.

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FWIW-a while ago I was using a B&W 805 as a center channel; I tried bi-wiring it and did not hear much (if any) of a difference.

wgmontgomery said:

Also, I remember researching a similar question (bi-wiring with Onkyo AVR) and the AVR was able to bi-wire the mains OR add 2 channels for 9.1; you can't do both. Basically, you can route the L/R mains signal to the amps that are used for the "extra" channels (height/width) OR use those amps for height or width.

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I think you are talking about bi-amping and not bi-wiring in this statement.

Kal Rubinson said:

I think you are talking about bi-amping and not bi-wiring in this statement.

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True; Bi-wiring would be one amp driving speaker cables that connect to the tweeter and woofer independently. Bi-amping would be two separate amps and speaker cables for the tweeter and woofer. Thanks...don't know how I missed that! :duh:

If you hear a difference with Bi-wiring, then the speaker wire gauge you used was to small.

wgmontgomery said:

True; Bi-wiring would be one amp driving speaker cables that connect to the tweeter and woofer independently. Bi-amping would be two separate amps and speaker cables for the tweeter and woofer. Thanks...don't know how I missed that! :duh:

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Don't beat yourself up. Both are, generally, a waste of effort with AVRs.

Kal Rubinson said:

Don't beat yourself up. Both are, generally, a waste of effort with AVRs.

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I agree, but I'm a separates guy myself. In fact, the old system that had a B&W 805 as a center had 4 different amps driven by a Lex MC-1. I ended-up bridging the stereo amp to mono on the center instead of using one side (L) for the tweeter and the other side (R) for the woofer...aka "bi-amping" the speaker.

My current system has bi-amped mains and center; the Dynaudios have two 50 watt RMS amps each. But I digress! Kal, you may find this thread interesting.

FWIW-I'd guess that using the extra channels in the 9.2 AVR to drive height or width speakers would probably be better than using them to bi-amp the mains.