Spades or bananas

Frank, your findings remind me of what good old Auntie Enid, Enid Lumley of yore used to say (she wrote for TAS and later for IAR, was much ridiculed for her findings then, many of which are accepted as common place now, a true pioneer she was and a golden eared one, if there ever was one)
She said, that gold plated spade-fork connectors sounded awful. She used to sandpaper her connectors down to the pure copper level to get the right sound she was after, which would point pretty much into the direction, you are pointing out. I think I'll start experimenting ....
Thanks Frank and Cheers!

Frank,

Are you saying that the cheap "Thomas & Betts fork
terminals" sounded better than the high quality gold
spades? You say that the sound degraded when you
went from your old spades to the new ones. I just
wanted to see if I read this right?

Hi Eastside, You read it correct. While the Thomas & Betts fork added unnatural artifacts to the sound, the MIT fork did the opposite. It dulled the sound and robbed the system of the NATURAL sound of the reference. The reference being the sound of the bare wire with no fork.
By the way, if anyone wants to really hear a pretty dramatic improvement, they should go out and purchase the Edison-Price binding post for their speakers and install them in place of the stock ones. Be prepared to be amazed after proper break in time. ALL parameters are improved.....Frank

Can anyone really hear the difference? How many people have identical types of speaker cables laying around with different connections on them and are able to do A/B comparisons?

Bare wire (which should have tinned ends as in AudioNote Kondo applications) sounds like the best solution but.. should it be wraped around the binding post or inserted through the hole?

As far as I am concerned as long as the wire makes a good contact - doesn't come off - I'm happy.

There are far too many other things to worry about in this hobby.

Frank is dead right! ( to these here pair of ears )
bare wire or Edson Price, just as Auntie Enid used to say.
And the difference is there to be heard....just another 2 cents...