Question for users of bare wire ends speaker cable

I don't like using bare wire because copper oxidizes immediately upon exposure to air, and continues to oxidize further as time goes on. The same is true of silver, and of all solders. Best to crimp to gold-plated spades which gives a true high-pressure metal-to-metal interface. (If using a proper dedicated crimping tool, that is. A pair of pliers from your toolbox isn't worth squat.) Gold is not as good a conductor as copper but is vastly more corrosion-resistant, so in the real world it is a lot better. I don't believe that solder is necessary if the crimp is done properly-- it's like wearing both a belt and suspenders:). I have disassembled good crimped connectors that were many years old and the copper in the crimped area is as bright as the day it was made, while everything else is dark brown. But on the other hand, soldering after the crimp is done probably doesn't hurt anything either, and if it lets you sleep better at night, then do it.

Sean, first of all, it would be tough to tin all the way back under the insulation so that no copper is exposed directly to the air, plus it kind of makes a mess, plus then you just end up with corroded solder rather than corroded copper, and a solid conductor to boot, and there goes your skin effect again. Second, "skin effect" is one of those things that is thrown around a lot but few people understand the physics behind it. Without going too deep, fundamentally it is a phenomenon that is frequency-dependent and only comes into play at frequencies far above the audible range (we're talking MHz range). Some of the worst cables I've ever heard were the original Monster Cable with its extremely finely stranded braided conductors, so clearly there are other factors at work here. I would place far more importance on other factors, such as good solid connections, and cable capacitance, inductance, insulation dielectric properties, and gauge.

Sean, actually "skin effect" works the opposite way from what you think, if I'm reading your post correctly (and I may not be). That is, at higher and higher frequencies, a solid core wire of a certain gauge will transmit current (i.e., electrons) worse than a bunch of paralleled smaller wires that make up the same gauge. This is because skin effect causes the electrons to travel on or near the surface only, and stranded wire has much more surface area than solid wire of the same net gauge. Again, this really doesn't come into play until WAY above the audio range, at which point all kinds of things are different and solid-core wire has other benefits as well. That said, I'm a big fan of solid-core wire for audio use as well. The problem is that gauge is one of the most critical properties determining wire performance and "sound", and 10 gauge solid core wire is stiff as hell. Thus the preference for stranded conductors or solid-wire Litz windings in most people's setups.

Sean, interesting test which I haven't done. But I will say that you're assuming way too much here, namely (1) that gauge can't possibly make any difference since the currents are so small (not necessarily so), and (2) that gauge and surface area are the only things being varied (certainly not so). In an earlier post, I postulated that capacitance, inductance, and insulation dielectric properties are all potentially important, and it is a virtual certainty that they are all varying as well in your hypothetical test setup. If you were willing to take the time to measure them all and manage to somehow hold all of them constant throughout the test regardless of wire gauge, then we would be getting somewhere. But that still doesn't rule out gauge as a possible influence. To do that, you would have to start comparing different conductor geometries, while still holding all the above constant (extremely difficult), or compare solid to stranded cable (which introduces a whole new can of worms which would be virtually impossible to neutralize). I don't have the time or the equipment to run such a test, so I can't say. What I can say, based on good sound engineering judgment, is that skin effect is probably very near the bottom of the list when it comes to the relative importance of factors which influence the "sound" of a cable. The Goertz cables, as an obvious example, are designed that way not for skin effect considerations, but to tune the impedance and capacitance characteristics to the designer's preference.