What's the advantage of termination...

Sonically??? None whatsoever if you ask me. However ... aesthetically, spades and bananas look tougher, more exotic, more audiophiliac and look more expensive, so cable manufacturers can have the excuse to charge more.

There is the issue of corrosion however since barewire (especially copper conductors) corrode/oxidize easily. Then there is the issue of durability. Barewires are susceptible to damage due to excessive tightness of the binding posts or mishandling of the cables while terminated cables are less so.

then..., posted on March 22, 1999 at 09:33:20
Felix	if i'm using pure silver wires which doesn't corrode as easily as copper, i should be fine using bare wire? thanks for ur response..

Re: What's the advantage of termination..., posted on March 22, 1999 at 11:01:43
Alan Ersen	Some could argue that terminations would tend to degrade the music signal because of its having to pass through additional dissimiliar conductive layers of banana/spade/pin material, plating and or solder. Alan Ersen

Not really, silver tarnishes too, and makes good thermocouple wire, posted on March 22, 1999 at 11:29:08

dy/dx

All you need to make voltage is a connection between two conductors. The wires/metals can be nearly identical and still have a millivolt fraction potential. That's the theory behind less is more, or more or less. Millitary spy statlites are powered on this principle, using a whole lot of thermocouples and, oh, let's say a small hunk of Pu for heat. It's the way you keep a hunk of metal, say a bridge over the ocean, from rusting out immediately too. You run a wire to a hunk of sacrificial metal, lets say Mg, in the ground, the idea being that the Mg will "tarnish" before the bridge. So you're fighting yourself anytime you solder a joint or add another connector, adding up the potentials or canceling them out, whatever. Use pure gold in all your circuits and wires and crimp the connections with huge force. That's how the Egyptians did their systems.
Don't worry about it. Your room is what needs work. The wires are fine.

Re: What's the advantage of termination..., posted on March 22, 1999 at 21:08:05
Hyperion	I agree. I was just being polite ... :-)

Re: then..., posted on March 22, 1999 at 21:20:02

Hyperion

Pure thin silver wire (for audio purposes) is too soft to survive a violent tug at the cables while it is inserted between the binding posts. Silver also deoxidizes and readily combine with sulfur and nitrogen in the air to form sulfides and nitrates. While all these silver compounds maybe conductive (I maybe wrong, I dont really know for sure), they dont sound like pure silver either.

My Audio Note AN SPZ cables have a thin tin plating over the silver conductors. (only in the termination) While this obviously degrades the sound a bit (albeit significantly less so, compared to spades or plugs I guess), the tin plating prevents the silver from tarnishing, and makes the cable more resistant to physical damage.

is bigger always better? ^_^, posted on March 23, 1999 at 15:14:58

Felix

I know that for interconnects, an extra thin fine silver wire is preferrable (30-32awg)

how about if i want to use pure silver for speaker cable,

is bigger awg better(16awg), or smaller is better?

thanks ^_^

Re: is bigger always better? ^_^, posted on March 23, 1999 at 18:54:35

Hyperion

I dunno what the optimum aggregate size is. But each conductor is fairly thin - like 0.2mm in the case of AN-SPz. There are however 120 strands of these thin wires in the cable.

Re: What's the advantage of termination..., posted on March 24, 1999 at 07:54:19

Jim Willis

One advantage of a proper size termination (spade or banana) over bare wire (multistrand) is that over time and after repeated speaker swaps (etc.) the bare wire can get frayed which could lead to shorts. Improper sized spades may result in shorts as well. Sonically - well I haven't heard a difference. I prefer gold plated bananas soldered in with silver solder, but it's an ease of use/esthetics/long term reliability issue rather than an audibility thing in my case.

Speaker Asylum

What's the advantage of termination...

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