Spades or bananas connectors?

I prefer bananas because of the convenience. I can't speak to which is technically better but I do know I have never heard a difference in sound between bananas and spades.

Bananas for me. They are more practical and after years of trying different connectors, I can hear zero difference between the two.

I agree with the other posters concerning bananas, but not just any banana! By far, I prefer the BFA style banana such as these used by Jeff Day of 6Moons fame to create his White Litning Moonshine cables:

http://www.audio-magus.com/product_p/mcls4.htm

http://6moons.com/audioreviews/whitelightning/moonshine.html

BTW, they appear to me to be identical to the Z-Plug banana used by Nordost.

These type of bananas provide a very secure connection as they provide constant outward pressure on the inside of your binding post, so they can not loosen over time like spades. Also, they provide great contact area over the entire surface of the banana, unlike those bananas that use a spring on the outside to maintain pressure.

They are very good and very inexpensive. Give them a try....

Enjoy,

TIC

I haven't experimented myself, so I am just relaying information from two friends who are high end dealers. For convenience, dealers love Banana plugs because they change out gear all of the time. However, neither use banana plugs because they find spades to be substantially better.

I actually got to hear a pair of small spendor speakers outfitted with a pair of extremely large binding posts from Australia that where silly expensive (sorry, I can't recall the brand name). The matching spades were thin, but also really big so they had a large contact area that corresponded with the large area of the binding posts. The improvement in dynamics and bass response was shockingly big -- you could not imagine that these were the same speakers as the ones equiped with OEM spades.

SPADES!!