Spades or Bananas w/jumpers? (LSi15)

[jderdock]

I started putting together some new speaker cabling last night using Canare 4S11 starquad, techflex and some heat-shrink tubing.

I'm trying to decide on how I'd like to terminate these. I'm still running the little brass jumper thingy on my LSi's and figured I'd try replacing these while I had some spare Canare 4S11 laying around.

My question:

Do I terminate my speaker cables with spades and make a banana-to-banana jumper?

Do I terminate my speaker cables with bananas and make a spade-to-spade jumper?

Or do I terminate my speaker cables with spades AND use spade-to-spade jumpers?

Thanks in advance, and attached are photos of my progress (still needs a little heat shrink here, some loom there and termination:

[organ]

Welcome to Club Polk!

Nice cables. Go bare wire. Spades/banannas just makes life easier for swapping cables. Bare wire is a better contact. Try bi-wiring instead of using jumpers.

[jderdock]

Thanks for the reply :)

I'm definitley going to be terminating them. I've always run bare wire and I always seem to end up with nasty ends on my cables and I'd rather avoid that this time around.

Why had I not thought of bi-wiring with this set? The starquad seems ideal for this application....

hmmm

[organ]

Yeah, you got a pair of 'bi-wire ready' cables there.

Ok, then go spades. They give you a big surface area and you can really tighten the binding posts. If you like banannas, find some that can fit real tight.

Good luck

[F1nut]

It doesn't make a bean hill of difference between spades and bananas. You nor anyone else can tell the difference sound wise. Bare wire isn't any better, again no one can tell the difference except when the copper oxidizes with time.

[RuSsMaN]

Bare wire will provide the best contact, with least resistance. Less metal, less terminations. If you don't bi-wire, I prefer spades for the best fit from amp to speaker (compression), and nanners for the jumper.

Cheers,
Russ

[F1nut]

Not to argue or anything, just curious. Can you tell a difference in sound quailty, Russ?

[jderdock]

It doesn't make a bean hill of difference between spades and bananas. You nor anyone else can tell the difference sound wise. Bare wire isn't any better, again no one can tell the difference except when the copper oxidizes with time.

I'm far from an expert on the topic, but wouldn't that depend on the style of jack that a speaker or amp uses? I've often found myself plugging bare wire into a speaker's input and thinking to myself: "I bet the connection between this bare wire and a specifically designed spade/banana would be more efficient than the bare wire straight to this speaker jack that doesn't seem optimally designed for a piece of bare wire".