Do pure copper banana plugs make a difference in the quality of the speaker sound.


What banana plugs (or other connectors) do you use to connect amp to speakers:
  • construction material
  • configuration
  • coating
  • contact enhancer
  • method for affixing wire to connector
  • etc.
Thanks for your contribution.
johnspain
Bare wire unless you want to change something.. Most folks know different terminal ends and HOW they are attached make a pretty big difference in SQ.  Especially if they are loose and open air.  Time will change that connection. Silver gets better, copper gets worse..Gold stays close to the same.. (contact wise over time)

Second, different material and plating.  Solder or secure with screws and tin or NOT to tin the ends and just tighten the screws. 

Did you dip the bare wire and the terminal end after a solder or screw tightening, in contact enhancer?

It all matters/changes the sound.. Then let it settle for a while..While it's breaking the rest of the way..Pure silver wire, holy cow... 400 plus hours, for anything  #12 or smaller.  Copper, drop it on the floor, 50 hours..

Little secret. NEVER tin the ends on silver wire. you'll never enjoy the wire if you do..Graphene paint the bare wire and tighten the lugs on mine. 1/2" silver lugs.. to the internal pure silver S/C Teflon wire inside.. The bass section, I don't use. But they are wired in all 1" flat braided copper in a loose silicone tube..Very caveman looking..Huge solder joints..Very polished to this day..The copper looks pretty good after 12 years.

Regards
These are the desirable things in a speaker wire/connectors:

Must have low resistance so as to not increase the output impedance of the amp. You get that by using better and thicker conductors. Copper is fantastic. So, the purer the copper, the better the conductance. Having said that, no need to be ridiculous either. 99.99% of the people wont be able to tell the difference between 99% pure copper
and 99.9999% pure copper. Not worth the extra which only a very sensitive measuring device can notice.

Lower capacitance. Higher capacitance will impede hi frequencies. But then again, you
will not notice it in a few nano farads.

Lower inductance. Do not coil your wire, run it straight. Increased inductance may affect the rise time of your signal due to an inductor resisting the rate of change of current thru it.  Again, a few nano henries will not be noticed.

A perfectly good pure copper speaker wire of about 12 gauge can easily be bought for about $50. No need to spend any more, unless you want to run miles of it.


Low mass gold plated Z plugs.

Very tight fitting for maximum contact area. You can stack them into each other for jumper cables. They are not expensive.

Contact enhancers worth doing get a graphene one if you can it does make a difference. Dampen with fo.q. ta32 tape.


I wonder if they have done significant blind testing?

I would also be curious to know if I were blind tested to compare speaker cables if I would hear a significant difference?  I doubt someone would sit down to listen to a system and say this sounds like you are using Tera Labs or Kimber Cable.  I do think buying a decent set of cables does make sense, but not spending more than $1,000.  However, $1,000 is a lot of money.  The system should I guess cost at least $10,000 to warrant the expense.