bananas vs spades as terminals for speaker cables

What has not been brought into consideration here is the need for periodic cleaning of the contacts and connectors throughout the system. From my experience after about 3 to 6 months the system became boring. A good thorough cleaning of all connectors brought everything back to life. The choice of spades or banana connectors will ultimately dictate the convenience of cleaning them. Set it and forget it? I wouldn't buy into that notion if you want to keep everything in optimal condition.

I think its just personal preference. I have had good results with both spades and bananas, though I prefer bare wire since all connectors affect the sound one way or another.

Rrog - speaker wire I'm using is a little too complex to use bare. It has whole bunch of strands in individual insulations and one that has again bunch of very thin strands. I decided to uses spades. Many purists believe that adding solder introduces another metal and recommend crimping only (Audioquest welds wires in ICs). I crimped my spades to provide oxygen free connection, then soldered it with 4% silver solder. Purists also believe in usage of unplated silver or copper since gold (for plating) is not the best conductor. Silver oxidizes and rhodium enhanced silver spades are expensive. I decided to use gold plated copper spades (from Audioquest) since gold plating (and perhaps nickel plating underneath gold) is very thin and should not affect conductivity. My speaker terminals are already gold plated.

Well, there are bananas and then there are bananas. Some bananas are so loose they barely stay in place. The kind that look like a crimped tube generally fit snugger and make better surface contact. My favorite, however, are the locking bananas. They give you the best of 'most everything--convenience of bananas, stress-free ability to connect and disconnect, plus excellent surface contact and the ability to stay put just like torqued-down spades.

I bought a pair of Cobalt speaker cables from a pawnshop. They came with the locking bananas and spoiled me. My integrated amp doesn't take spades--bare wire, pins, or bananas. So for this setup locking bananas are a boon. Since then I replaced them with some Zu Libtec speaker cables with snug but non-locking bananas. They'll do but the locking ones are better. But I'll put up with it because these Libtecs are incredibly good.

Kijanki, With complicated wire designs there is no other option than terminating the ends of your wire. Audioquest has been very good about providing both bananas and spades with minimal auditory affect.