I have to agree with wolf, I worked in HiFI for many years (now retired but still a HIFi junkie at times) and found that having good clean terminations of speaker cables solved quite a number of service issues down the road for many clients and the AQ bananas and spades are an excellent example of quality terminations. They are also very easy to deal with when moving, cleaning or changing bits of the system.
I have a M&K sub that I drive at speaker level simply because my ARC Pre amp specifies a 20K ohm minimum impedance load. The sub sounds excellent using spades at the sub with the bananas stacked into the speaker lugs on my amp using an equal length run of Kimber 4VR as the cable for each channel… of course the longer the run the more the cable quality influences the signal and mine are only 7' long.
I also found, and still do find for myself, that cable choices are potentially a place where I get a bit of OCD happening.
I have learned to trust what I like to hear and I experimented continuously for years, having had the luxury of working in a great high end audio shop… For some the cosmetics play a big role, or theory, or price... or all of the above...
My experience is also that a great AC power source makes for a surprising difference in my systems overall resolution and is a good high return of value for the $$ spent... I discovered the Shunyata PS8 as a great place to begin, the entire set up sounds cleaner… even though my system is is plugged into a 15amp daisy chained $.97 wall socket… next on my to do list… A 10 Ga 20 amp dedicated feed from the mains, probably cheaper than any other upgrade I could do...
Remember to Enjoy the music as much as the chase!
I have a M&K sub that I drive at speaker level simply because my ARC Pre amp specifies a 20K ohm minimum impedance load. The sub sounds excellent using spades at the sub with the bananas stacked into the speaker lugs on my amp using an equal length run of Kimber 4VR as the cable for each channel… of course the longer the run the more the cable quality influences the signal and mine are only 7' long.
I also found, and still do find for myself, that cable choices are potentially a place where I get a bit of OCD happening.
I have learned to trust what I like to hear and I experimented continuously for years, having had the luxury of working in a great high end audio shop… For some the cosmetics play a big role, or theory, or price... or all of the above...
My experience is also that a great AC power source makes for a surprising difference in my systems overall resolution and is a good high return of value for the $$ spent... I discovered the Shunyata PS8 as a great place to begin, the entire set up sounds cleaner… even though my system is is plugged into a 15amp daisy chained $.97 wall socket… next on my to do list… A 10 Ga 20 amp dedicated feed from the mains, probably cheaper than any other upgrade I could do...
Remember to Enjoy the music as much as the chase!