Why terminate speaker wire?

so it's an oxidation issue?

One of the reason for silver plating the copper wire is to stop the copper from oxidation. Second reason is for ease of soldering. I use the wire below 12 AWG M22759/11-12 PTFE wire (bare ends /12'' long.) It makes excellent speakers cables. IMO: Speaker wire termination adds more resistance to the cable. My rationale, is shorter speaker wire with less connections is a good thing.

Mike

Makes a better connection.Spades are the best.

So now silver doesn't oxidize? And why would adding an extra connection point be better than just a solid wire? It's not connectors don't improve sound they are just convenient. On loudspeakers, I also try to not use binding posts those negatively affect sound to a larger degree than a wire termination. Keep in mind much of what you think is proper about audio is more about convenience and ease of production and profits it is not about sound quality. 

If an engineer cannot design a better connection than wrapping a wire around a post, he must be an electrical engineer.  fire him and get a mechanical engineer to work that job. 

You have a point that adding connections can introduce degradation if not done right.  do it right.

Also, adding a huge chunk of mass into your circuit can be an issue.  Look at low mass connectors.  

Jerry

sometimes we ask why expensive cables are expensive. i’m not talking about $30k cables here, but why it’s $1000 or $3000 instead of $50 or $100? part of it is the quality of the connectors, and the care taken to fasten them.

my speaker cables are likely the heaviest of any speaker cables, their name is Evolution Acoustics TRSC (triple run speaker cables), and they are close to 2 inches around of three runs of thick cables (the same cable used inside my speakers). so to bring all that wire together into a spade is not trivial. if it was bare wire there would be no way to connect it to the amplifier.

i’ve compared these cables to my previous cables, the $30k+ Transparent Audio Opus MM, and preferred mine to those. mine are not cheap, but don’t break the bank either, $6k (last time i checked) for an 8 foot set with spades.

i would agree that certain type of speaker wire can go ’naked’ onto a binding post, but depends on the wire.

we can argue all day about wire mattering to the performance of the system, but you do have to attach it to speakers and to amps.