Speaker Cable Termination

I prefere bare wires. It's not realy a brainer to maintain. Just clean them once in a while with the contact cleaner. The crimped termination can also oxidize with time and will need much larger effort to clean.

Frank at Signal Cable used offer and recommend his best speaker cable (Silver Resolution) with just bare wire with silver solder on the ends. For some reason he no longer offers/recommends that option on his website.
Your comment makes a lot of sense, but when I had unterminated 4TC in my system, I observed oxidation and "reterminated" the ends several times. However, following your line of thinking, the speaker termination that introduces the least amount "of something in the signal path" is probably the Eichmann's new "banana plugs." If you are looking at bananas vs. spades in general, I would agree with Newbee, as I also prefer spades.

After experienced with bananas, spades and none are working good for me and very expensive so I tinned the ends with 4% silver solder then tight them up to 5 way binding posts. Happy clam.

Arni,
applying a silver solder to the ends of the bare wires makes no sencei since it decreases the contact conductivity.
The unit resistance of the solder is more than several times higher than any conventional conductor even with the silver content.

"11-17-06: Marakanetz
Arni,
applying a silver solder to the ends of the bare wires makes no sencei since it decreases the contact conductivity."

Marakanetz, I did not claim any benefits to this nor recommend it; I was just making an observation about pre- and past practice of a cable manufacturer that has actually discontinued doing this. My wording may have been off, I really meant tinning the ends (that is my recollection).