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Correct way to attach speaker wires... Wait, what!!!

Okay this is going to sound ridiculous but I've always wondered if I'm connecting the wires in the proper way to the binding posts. I just picked up a Red Dragon S500 power amp and I figured I finally should ask the question. It has the screw down type of posts. Here is a link to the pic on their website. The wires I have are Mapleshade Clearview Golden Helix which terminate in a stiff single 3/4" wire. Any help for a dumb question would be greatly appreciated!
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hifiman5's avatar
hifiman5
1,611 posts
 
The wire of your choice cold welded (method used by Audioquest) to thin pure silver spades.  Tighten down but not to the point that you deform the thin silver spades.  Listen and enjoy!
auxinput
1,538 posts
 
After doing a lot of testing with different types of power cord and interconnect connectors, I do not actually believe that bare copper against bare copper would be the best solution.  It really depends on what your speaker binding posts are.  Bare copper against bare copper (two different pieces of metal under physical contact) does not really transfer higher frequencies as well.  This is where plating increases the ability for high frequencies to jump from one piece to another (i.e. bare copper against rhodium/gold/silver plating).  The plating just dictates the type of sonic signature you're after.  Gold plated binding posts could be good, but if it's pure brass, then you can probably improve by using a plated banana/spade.
czarivey
4,494 posts
 

@grannyring , I agree to bare wire, only what to do with that 3/4" thick sausage LOL? I doubt that it's going to be cooperative to the screw-in posts of amp or any posts technically. Need to check if Mapleshade doodz took such thickie from near-by power transformer...

soldering is out of question simply because you will rather need an electrode welder instead of soldering iron.


grannyring's avatar
grannyring
4,637 posts
 
Good point. I’ve been able to tin individual wire runs, stranded or solid core, up to 14 gauge no problem. If you start to get 12 gauge and thicker well yeah not easy to tin.
However, once you strip a speaker cable, outer jacket and insulation, I don’t know of any using gauges any thicker than 10 gauge? Perhaps they’re out there I’m just not aware of them.

I don’t use binding posts, at least I don’t use them in a traditional manner. I just use them for clamping together the runs of the speaker cable and the crossover leads from the speaker. I haven’t had any problem clamping together two 10 gauge wires with a 12 gauge wire with this process.

You see I really do not believe in connectors as I believe they all degrade sound. I do the same thing on the amp end and bypass the binding post simply using them as a clamp for the output wires of the amplifier to the speaker wire.

In the past I have built my own nylon binding posts able to clamp together very large gauges of wire and cabling.

I realize not many people are going to go to all this effort. I’m kind of nuts that way.
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