What say you binding posts or direct wire?


If I can get away with it I don't use BP. I find even the best like Mundorfs etc all sound inferior to direct wiring. Seems illogical to me to use costly cables hooked up to a binding post and then having just hook up wire after the posts. I get better-sounding results just by using quality speaker cable wired directly into my networks with the same cable type after to transducer. 

128x128johnk

I wonder what no outlets or power cords would do for sonic effect?

Instead of hooking the Romex to an outlet, continue the run straight to the equipment and then solder it in?

I knew someone who did that sort of thing and it created massive inconvenience.  this person also eliminated the selector knob on his linestage so that changing source components meant switching RCA cables (at least that wasn't hardwired).

 

A couple of months ago me and a friend of mine compared, just for fun, his Exposure 3010 integrated amplifier to my Accuphase E470. As expected, the Accuphase proved superior. We did the comparison in my system, where I use the bare wire at the speaker end of the speaker cable, while the amplifier end benefits from some WBT gold plated cable sleeves (WBT-0437). However, his amplifier only accepts bananas, so we inserted the sleeve terminated ends of the speaker cable into 4 WBT Nextgen gold plated copper bananas (WBT-0610 Cu). After we finished, I removed the bananas and reconnected the sleeved cable to my Accuphase. Both me and my friend were astonished by the positive difference made by the removal of the (expensive and well regarded) WBT bananas: obviously better texture, detail, mostly everything was better. In a way, this was a more impressive improvement than going from the Exposure amplifier to the Accuphase because, although (somewhat!) lower in magnitude iirc, it did not included any back steps at all (even moving from Exposure to the much more expensive Accuphase was not an improvement on all fronts, the Exposure had a bit more drive / punch in the midbass).

So in my experience sleeved wire = or > bare wire >>>> WBT bananas. 

I have also experienced with WBT spades, they are sounding slightly different to the bananas (the bananas have more drive in the bass, the spades have a more euphonic, warmer midrange). Generally speaking, I didn't like the sound of the silver or rhodium plated connectors I've tried so far. The speaker cable is OCC copper and even the oxidized bare wires at the speaker end proved clearly superior to the WBT connectors (bought from the authorized dealer, so I have no suspicion they could be fakes).

I bet removing the binding posts will improve the sound. I'm firmly in the fewer connectors = better sound camp.

this person also eliminated the selector knob on his linestage so that changing source components meant switching RCA cables (at least that wasn't hardwired).

Thus putting the plating on his connectors at risk. If RCAs and gold-clad, they won't last very long...

If I can get away with it I don't use BP. I find even the best like Mundorfs etc all sound inferior to direct wiring.

@johnk The next step of course is putting the amps inside the speaker so the connections are soldered at either end and the length is short. But if you have  tubes you might have problems with microphonics... Plus you'd be best off driving balanced lines to the amps to prevent the colorations otherwise caused by interconnect cables...