School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please

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School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | A&E, Dear Lazyweb, Tech |

Dear Lazyweb,

Let’s talk about speakers and speaker wire.

Ten years ago I bought a set of Paradigm speakers (which I still lurv), a Pioneer receiver (which is OK if not great) and lamp cord to connect everything. And for ten years everything was copacetic and there was peace in the kingdom.

Recently we upgraded our TV and TiVo and replaced the DVD with Blu-Ray. During the upgrading, furniture changing and component rearranging two of the speakers stopped playing audio. I got one to work again by re-cutting the ends of the lampcord at the receiver. I did the same with the center channel, but it’s still not working and I haven’t had time to fool with it.

I realized something while recutting those speaker wires: I hates me some bare ends on speaker wires. The ends get frayed and the lamp cord wire is so crazy thick I can barely cram it into the connectors on the back of the receiver (which I think is part of the problem I’m having now).

I want to convert to banana plugs. The receiver and speakers have the right connectors. I mic’ed them and they both use 4mm connectors, which seem to be the audio standard. Looking at Monoprice.com I see these banana connectors and these instructions for using them. The price is right, the reviews are great, and it looks easy-squeezey, but I gots questions.

Is it OK to not solder solder-type banana plugs as those instructions say?
Should I use something other than lampcord?
Anything else I need or need to know?

4 Comments to School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please

aczarnowski
December 25, 2009

I’m one of those guys still threading the bare wire into connectors on both ends. I’ve had good luck with monoprice though, and I can’t see how the plugs wired according to their instructions would be noticeably worse than the bare wire setup.

Hopefully the HiFi harpies don’t descend and berate us as heathens for snubbing Monster Cable…

Les Jones
December 25, 2009

Heh. “Dude, you have got to get rid of all your cables and replace them with free-trade cables. The difference in audio quality is obvious to anyone with a trained ear.”

pdb
December 25, 2009

Speaking as someone who flunked out of one of the best EE schools in Canada, the mechanical connection those plugs make will be electrically indiscernible from a soldered joint. You’ll get more noise from the plug to receptacle connection, and it wouldn’t be difficult for a unskilled solderer to make a worse joint.
pdb´s last blog ..Merry Christmas!

TinMan
December 29, 2009

PDB has hit the nail on the head. The issue is the material transition from wire–>plug causing reflections/alterations in the flow of current.

From how it was explained to me, short of being able to solder in a vacuum and/or a chamber full of an inert gas (any of the nobles but I think argon is the norm for ’soooo-per high quality’ cables) soldering doesn’t get you anything short of burned fingers and a set of un-reusable cable ends.

When I upgraded a couple years ago from the bare wire of aczarnowski’s to a similar situation as yours I went with Monster’s (yeah, yeah) product:

http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=4583

My amp had banana plugs but the speakers still had the spring clips so these were a good compromise.

They worked great and weren’t much of a hassle to terminate and certainly saved me the headache of re-stripping and twisting the bare wire each time I had to move a component.

Bust of luck,
TinMan