Are Terminals Necessary?

Jerry, As far as I know the only possible reason not to use bare wire (assuming it's copper) is because it oxidizes over time when exposed to the air and there-bye jeopardizing it's ability to conduct as intended.

Another reason is that some of the cables are constructed of such fine gauge individual strands of wire that they would easily break off if left unterminated.

-IMO

As with all things audio, everything is a compromise. I suppose it would be better to directly connect the wires to the speaker and eliminate the speaker posts, connectors and solder joints.

That being said, I prefer any number of high end speaker cables (with connectors in place) to the ordinary hook up wire than many people consider adequate, even if they were directly wired.

There are plenty of flaws in (all) our systems to keep us busy for years. If we were totally hard wired, experimentation would slow to a crawl. Experimentation is necessary to learn and the only way to be sure a change is for better or worse.

Albertporter...As you imply, wire terminations instead of bare wire connections do make it much more convenient to make all the changes involved with cable evaluations. Therefore, to protect your bank account, I suggest hard soldered connections :)

I should have thought of that.