sometimes we ask why expensive cables are expensive. i’m not talking about $30k cables here, but why it’s $1000 or $3000 instead of $50 or $100? part of it is the quality of the connectors, and the care taken to fasten them.
my speaker cables are likely the heaviest of any speaker cables, their name is Evolution Acoustics TRSC (triple run speaker cables), and they are close to 2 inches around of three runs of thick cables (the same cable used inside my speakers). so to bring all that wire together into a spade is not trivial. if it was bare wire there would be no way to connect it to the amplifier.
i’ve compared these cables to my previous cables, the $30k+ Transparent Audio Opus MM, and preferred mine to those. mine are not cheap, but don’t break the bank either, $6k (last time i checked) for an 8 foot set with spades.
i would agree that certain type of speaker wire can go ’naked’ onto a binding post, but depends on the wire.
we can argue all day about wire mattering to the performance of the system, but you do have to attach it to speakers and to amps.