Spades vs. Banana plugs ??


What's your preference and why?

Spades or banana plugs?

mabonn

Good quality spades for best sound. 
 

Bananas for convenience but poor sound. 
 

The tight screw down compression of a spade is always better than loose banana slip in connection. 
 

Just don’t be a dummy and let the spades short/touch. 

@sudnh 

So you learned this by experimentation? Please tell us the details.
 

I have always thought that spades should sound the best… but after hundreds of hours of experimenting with interconnects, and a hundred hours with speaker cables etc. it has just been easier to choose spades on the logic and not actually do the work comparing them. I’d love to hear the details.

@ghdprentice

I’ve done many years of DIY using high end cables and connectors and had spades and bananas. Left bananas connectors long ago due to poorer sound quality.

Bananas, particularly the ones that spin are, for sound quality, not great and the connection degrades faster over time due to the low compression slip in fit.

Perfectly fine for mid fi audio tho where uncompromised SQ is not a goal