Connectors:Banana's OR Spade's

Kimber PostMaster or Cardas Rodium Spades.

Best one is WBT.

Best Best one = bare wire.

So who makes the best spades, then?

Spade will be more contact and a better sound, plus banana's contact is not as tight as spades, since spades you will have to screw it all the way in order to keep it tight, so it will be better and a tighter contact. Spades also uses less cheap-metal/copper (Sounddegrading) materials than bananas, and the resistant is lower than bananas since it has less metal. Bare wires is the best, but almost all speaker cables are stock terminated. One thing, if you have a extremely stiff cable you might want to use banana instead, I ordered my XLO with banana beacuase they are extremely stiff and once they are sharply bended the copper crystal inside will crack and it will sound like crab, so, I rder banana to avoid sharp bend or snap off situation.

Viggen - Loss of extreme highs, loss of bass weight - loss of soundstage depth. This is really bizarre to me but I use spades and even with identical wire I noted those differences and could only say because had to do with the quality of the connection.
Note I was using "jumpers" on my bi-wire speaker terminals and this may have also been a reason.
I you don't hear a difference then try again in six months - after you give all the connections a good cleaning / retightening and see if you hear an improvment.

Interconnects were different. ALl sound or none at all.

Can people really hear the difference between spade or banana connections? If so, what are the differences you've experienced? I use banana since they are easier to swap cables, and I do not experience any discernable differences.

I tried a set of speaker cables with locking banana terminals and found they would work loose. Even though they are a pain to tighten sometimes, I would recommend the spade style termination.

I always went with spades, but I'm sick of them. It is a total bitch to do comparisons. I have two separate biwire cable runs to the amp, so stacking space lugs at 180 degree angles without scratching things on the back of the amps is not my idea of a good time.

A friend has a highly resolving system and uses bananas, and that's the route I'm going to take.

Spade ends definately!! Much better contact on the Binding posts... more surface area... was never a fan of the plug in... plus bananas get loose over time.
Good luck,
Joe
Custom Audio LLC

SPADES, definitely!

Many high-end components won't even except bananas.

Krell doesn't take bananas.

Richard