Speaker cable and Interconnect BRASS Connectors

Its a strength game pure copper, silver(somewhat) and gold are way to soft to use with out adding something so brass wins the strength to cost to performance game. My guess is there are some legal requirements for strength as well for safety reasons.

Tinned bare wire is best "IMO" but not very convenient. I say tinned to prevent-control corrosion you can use products to help here, but I’m not personally a fan of smearing goop on my connectors - wires.

You wont find high quantities of silver in silver solder that is DYI use with out special equipment.  I think around 3% - 5% for electronics using an iron. Anymore an you need torches not something your going to do with electronics I'm thinking. You can get up to 80%+ but that's for fixing water pipes and silver dishes etc. and some specialty items were you need no lead. 

Almandog,

This is an interesting question/concern which I have considered at length in my pursuit for perfection in speaker cables, and I’m glad you bring it up. In my case I use Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper interconnects and Hologram 2’s at the recommendation of Robert Lee, owner of AZ for optimizing my system which includes PASS labs x250.8, XP-20 preamp and among others Focal Scala Utopias. I own both connectors for my 2 sets of Hologram 2 speaker cables, spades on both ends, which are zero copper, and spades with locking banana which are brass. I must say trying to hear the difference between the two is difficult. The zero copper length wires of the 9ft runs of each I feel overrides the small brass terminators on the speaker end in the case of the spade/ banana pair. I don’t hear a bottleneck affecting sound in any way, highs lows detail etc. But I propose to you calling Robert ( his cell number is on their website and he will pick up) and discussing this with him and posting your/his conclusions here, as he is articulate, a perfectionist, engineer and former violinist. It could be very helpful to all.

Best,

janmnov

Another thing we dont know is: The kind of wire used inside the speakers. But that is another subject because cable makers and speaker makers are mostly different companies. Last weekend I was in Tokyo and I went to my favorite spot to buy some interconnect and speaker connectors but they only had brass connectors. I bought a few pairs. I will do a test at some point.

Tellurium copper (or even berylium copper) would be superior to brass or bronze, yet strong enough and elastic. Brass is a legacy, historic material but also obviously cheaper to make connectors from. While it is great for general use it's not the best available yet affordable option for hifi. 

However makers of connector still mostly refuse to accept that minimum metal mass is a way to go for hi-fi instead of massive, heavy connectors which have to fight Eddy currents. Also, heavy nickel plating under gold or silver finish plating is still preferred over direct gold/silver plating just because it gives that nicem looking eye-candy effect gloss. Seems many manufacturers prefer eye candy gloss or massive approach before what's best for the sound. However wise ones will choose otherwise if they have an option...