Are Terminals Necessary?

Albertporter...As you imply, wire terminations instead of bare wire connections do make it much more convenient to make all the changes involved with cable evaluations. Therefore, to protect your bank account, I suggest hard soldered connections :)

I should have thought of that.

From what I've seen of his system, Albert Porter's bank account has already been terminated. That's a heck of a system!

It is true that every connection is a loss of signal, but where bare wire connections will deteriorate over time, spades or banana plugs should remain constant. Ideally we would all have our IC terminated inside the cabinet of the electronics, and our SCs would terminate at the crossovers of the speakers, but as 'the great one' said, that would be unpractical. Therefore we opt for the lesser of a great number of evils!

I tried bare wire ends. Over time the copper discolored and the speaker teminals chewed up the exposed strands.

I tried tinning the bare ends with solder. This works great with smaller diameter wire or spring-type terminals. The solder makes the conductors more durable and easier to push thru tight spaces. I still noticed the oxidation creeping down into the insulation.

Heavy gauge wire, especially biwired at the amp end, won't fit thru the hole in many amp and speaker terminals. Some kind of connector becomes necessary. Now I solder spades to the wire ends and cover the insulation with plastic sleeves to minimize air exposure. Hooking bare wire around a terminal and torquing it down is a recipe for a loose connection. The good news is that whatever wire/terminal interface you choose, it will be the correct choice.

Hmm... contrary to the advice I got from ProAc. When I got my ProAcs a long time ago, the advice was to use bare wire. When the copper wires get crushed under the speaker terminals, they will actually crush and the metal to metal connection will be gas-free, so no oxidization. My understanding is that the surface interfaces (wire to solder, solder to terminal, terminal to speaker terminal, etc) are what you are trying to avoid...