The Speaker Cable Site

One of the most hotly debated topics in home entertainment is whether you should terminate your speaker cables with banana plugs or spade terminals. For every single person who passionately argues that banana plugs are the best option, there is another person who argues just as passionately that spade terminals are the best.

This makes it extremely hard to try and figure out which option to use, especially if you have just recently started to become interested in home audio/home entertainment, so this article will briefly illustrate the benefits of banana plugs and spade terminals so that you will hopefully have an easier time deciding how to terminate your cables.

Banana Plugs – The Benefits

The main reason that banana plugs are so popular is because they add so much convenience. If you regularly plug and unplug your components it can be a real pain trying to fasten spade terminals securely, and even worse when using bare cable – just ask anyone who has wasted 10 minutes trying to thread bare speaker cable through a terminal or binding post! With banana plugs it’s simply a matter of pushing the plug in and pulling it out. Simple.

If you have your devices on display, then many people find banana plugs offer a more attractive and professional appearance. Even basic, low priced plugs look great and can certainly enhance the look of your entertainment or stereo system.

Banana plugs also help to protect the end of your cables from corrosion, which is especially important in you live in a very humid climate.

Spade Terminals – The Benefits

It may take slightly longer to connect and disconnect spade terminals when compared to banana plugs, but they still allow you to make a connection much more quickly and easily than would be possible with bare wire. However, spades take up much less room than banana plugs, so are an ideal solution to use whenever space is at a premium. And since spade terminals allow the cable to sit flush against the back of the device, they are an ideal solution for using with anything that is wall mounted.

In most cases spade terminals are able to offer the strongest connection, simply because of the large surface areas between the end of the cable and the spade terminal, and the spade terminal and the binding post. Obviously this helps you achieve the best possible performance from your system.

Spade terminals, if properly insulated, will also help to protect the ends of your cable from corrosion, however you must make sure that there is no stray wire sticking out.

Both Have Options Have Drawbacks

The main drawback with banana plugs is that some of the cheaper plugs may not form a secure connection and can slip out over time. This is easily solved by buying higher quality items, but obviously increases the cost. The key problem with spade terminals is that they are fairly hard to use in tight spaces – if you can’t get access to the back of your device then it can be almost impossible to try and connect the spade terminal properly.

Conclusion

Whether you use banana plugs or spade terminals is completely up to you, as you can see both can give you some great benefits, but both have their limitations too. In the real world there isn’t much difference in terms of performance so it all boils down to how accessible your components are.

If space is at a premium, but you are able to get access to the back of the device, then spade terminals are the way to go. If your device isn’t accessible, or if you hook and unhook your speaker system a lot then banana plugs may be the best option.

During the festive season I was over at the house of a family friend, watching TV. Their reasonably new TV was hooked up using a standard PAL TV connection. I noticed that as you move the connection, the picture changed. When the connection was perfect the picture was great, but at times it wasn’t so good, and especially if you moved it.

This made me think: if something as small as a bump to the TV stand could cause a dramatic change in picture and sound quality, and there appears to be an effect on picture quality generally, there must be some truth to the fact that good connectors (read: good, not necessarily expensive) may have an impact on sound quality. It’s certainly true for signal integrity, as demonstrated.

I’ll do some research. More to come…