Soldered VS ...everything else

Some thoughts:

For electrical contact and reliability, you cannot beat a crimp connection, assuming the crimp connection is done with a proper ratcheting crimper, not the $10-15 crimpers you get from the hardware store. It forms a metal to metal bond and evacuates the contact areas of air preventing oxydation. The crimper has the match the terminal design as well. 


Silver solder, the stuff we use that melts near typical soldering temperatures, is not pure silver, it is not even mostly silver. It will have <5% silver in it. The rest is tin, and copper usually, but you can still find some with lead too.  If you made a really good crimp connection with a proper tool, solder is not going to improve it much. If you did not make a good connection, it will. Solder does make connections more brittle and can lead to strands breaking.

If you really believe EMI is a problem, and often it can be within equipment itself, especially when dealing with large bandwidths and high impedance nodes, then point to point wiring will create more pathways for the reception and generation of EMI.  Anyone who has done high speed amplifiers and/or power electronics is always using the mantra to keep loop sizes as small as possible, and that requires a PCB.

When it comes to termination I tend to use eutectic solder when attaching RCA's and Banana plugs

For mains cables I crimp first and then solder a spade connector because I want to be certain the wire is not going to come out of the plug under any circumstances.
I also found it sounded the best as opposed to bare wire and crimp only.

I have tried both solder and screw mount for spades and bananas, but I now use a very specific Bananas that has to be soldered.

Eutectic solder is a solder made of 37 percent lead and 63 percent tin and is also called 63/37 solder. Eutectic solder melts at a single temperature, which makes it preferable to non-eutectic solder.  It makes a superior joint.

I have compared it to 4% silver solder and prefer the eutectic solder.=- it makes a nicer joint

Everybody has their own preferences - steve

All solder pretty much is eutectic. All eutectic means is that it melts all at once at a temperature lower than its constituent parts. I am not aware of any common solders that do not do this.

Tin-Lead solder melts at a lower temperature than other solder types, and as well, it tends to wet components better than other solders. It is also less brittle. That is probably why you like it. The wetting part can be fixed with other solders with better fluxes to some degree.

Isn’t it encouraging that future is wireless?

Until then, no solder, bananas.

If you can, connect the clean bare wires to the speaker terminals. All connectors, paste or any applied coating will degrade the signal.

But, if that is not possible make the connection with the best metallurgy available. No solder, paste, etc. Crimping would be the best in my opinion. You want to minimize any substance between the connections.  

ozzy