Best way of connecting bare wire to bare wire

Thanks for all the great responses - I've been reading a lot lately on this, it seems that solder vs. crimp is an ongoing debate. Quality of solder, quality of join, quality of crimp/crimping tool, type of wire etc etc all play factors. I read somewhere that solder *can* give the best connection, but most crimped connections are as good or better than most solder jobs (especially after some time). Also started looking at the wire nuts and there are a ton of different designs! I never knew it could get so complicated :) I guess I'll start with wire nuts and see how that works for me, since it's by far the easiest and least expensive.

Seems a little silly to be commenting on the quality of wire nuts but you do want to be sure the ones you get have a wire coil inside. Some inexpensive ones are just a plastic cap without any wire inside the wire nut itself. The ones with the metal coil grip much better.

With a soldered connection done properly the solder does not make the electrical connection. The wires are twisted or crimped together, thus making the contact, and the solder is added to prevent things coming apart.

I was impressed with the Speakon connectors which I used as jacks on the wall for an in-wall system, and as mating connectors on my speaker wires. But I think they would be overkill for simply joining two wires.

www.mmxpress.com/technical/connections.htm

Good photo illustrations of wire connections.
If you decide to soldier, use the 'Western Union' splice.
Use good quality Rosen Core solder, NOT ACID CORE.

I was taught to solder by a 'Mil Spec' guy and it is amazing how much detail he went into......At the real course they will cut your solder joints in half so you can see the quality.

FWIW, I was reading an interview with a person from WBT. They prefer crimping over soldering. Their Nexgen connectors use soldering only because there isn't enough metal to crimp properly.

The previous post about crimping, then covering with an antioxidant coating and shrink tubing seems like a great way to do it if you're handy enough to do those things.

By the way, you can buy crimping sleeves individually. I've come across them at this site, where I've bought a number of things over the years. Just scroll down to the WBT section. You can even buy the WBT crimping tool and send it back after using it. They'll buy it back from you at the same price. Pretty cool.

http://www.uhfmag.com/Connectors.html

If you use wire nuts, that's a neat idea. It beats my first stereo where I hand twisted the wires together and covered the twists with masking tape (It was a long time ago). Naturally, wire nuts need to be special audiophile grade nuts with six nines copper inside the nut and hand made by Swiss mountain gnomes.