Speaker Connections

[fpitas]

Is the metal the bolt is made of or the plating going to have any measurable effect on sound quality?

No, not if you use a little grease and tighten it well. I throw in a copper crush washer just to help things stay air tight.

[Kered]

Thanks, I have some chinesium stainless bolt sets that I think would look good. Just need the copper crush washers.

[billfitzmaurice]

Is the metal the bolt is made of or the plating going to have any measurable effect on sound quality?

It would if it was five feet long. But at size we're talking about it won't, no more than it does with the lugs on the driver.

[tvrgeek]

Is the metal the bolt is made of or the plating going to have any measurable effect on sound quality?

Only if it was made from Nylon.

[Liberator of Magic Smoke]

I find binding posts endlessly annoying. The ones with a hex shape on the nut are less irritating, since a nut driver works well when dealing with them. Binding posts are to me the audio equivalent of the Presta tire valve. Those were going extinct fifty years ago, after the French figured out how to make a good frame pump, but then the wannabes thought they looked more like racers if they had Presta valves on their clincher tires, because the big boys used tubulars and those only came with Presta valves. There are, of course, all sorts of silly beliefs attached to Presta valves.

The easiest way to use binding posts is to use banana plugs with them, so you end up with most people using inferior connections on them. There are lots of clever alternatives to the dreaded spring connector to be found on the backs of older receivers and such. Finding half a dozen tiny, smooth binding posts crowded together on the back of a tiny amp is just absurd. Whatever those green plastic plugs are called, they are tidy and easy to deal with, but for some reason they have to be icky green in color. I dunno, must be rocket science or something. I never had a problem with spring terminals, except for the ones that were made as cheaply as possible. The audio pro who I know, the guy who builds his own PA equipment, always uses the screw terminals pictured above. He told me he tried other stuff, and for permanent installations nothing else works as well. He uses Speakons for everything else.

Virtually every building in North America has hundreds of wire nuts hidden in the walls and ceilings, even on 50 amp circuits. They might look kludgy out in the open, but it's hard to take arguments about their capability as electrical connectors seriously.

[fpitas]

I find binding posts endlessly annoying. The ones with a hex shape on the nut are less irritating, since a nut driver works well when dealing with them. Binding posts are to me the audio equivalent of the Presta tire valve. Those were going extinct fifty years ago, after the French figured out how to make a good frame pump, but then the wannabes thought they looked more like racers if they had Presta valves on their clincher tires, because the big boys used tubulars and those only came with Presta valves. There are, of course, all sorts of silly beliefs attached to Presta valves.

The easiest way to use binding posts is to use banana plugs with them, so you end up with most people using inferior connections on them. There are lots of clever alternatives to the dreaded spring connector to be found on the backs of older receivers and such. Finding half a dozen tiny, smooth binding posts crowded together on the back of a tiny amp is just absurd. Whatever those green plastic plugs are called, they are tidy and easy to deal with, but for some reason they have to be icky green in color. I dunno, must be rocket science or something. I never had a problem with spring terminals, except for the ones that were made as cheaply as possible. The audio pro who I know, the guy who builds his own PA equipment, always uses the screw terminals pictured above. He told me he tried other stuff, and for permanent installations nothing else works as well. He uses Speakons for everything else.

Virtually every building in North America has hundreds of wire nuts hidden in the walls and ceilings, even on 50 amp circuits. They might look kludgy out in the open, but it's hard to take arguments about their capability as electrical connectors seriously.

I saw a picture of space shuttle wiring once. It had the wires crimped into ring terminals screwed to terminal blocks. There's a reason they've been around so long.

[Liberator of Magic Smoke]

Heh. That's a place where you really, really don't want faulty wire connections. Someone told me long ago that the switches NASA uses are all tested to half their design life, on the theory that they seldom fail the first few times they are used. A switch that doesn't make it to its design lifetime will usually fail in the first half of that number of uses. Don't know how true all that is, but is makes a great story.

[fpitas]

Heh. That's a place where you really, really don't want faulty wire connections. Someone told me long ago that the switches NASA uses are all tested to half their design life, on the theory that they seldom fail the first few times they are used. A switch that doesn't make it to its design lifetime will usually fail in the first half of that number of uses. Don't know how true all that is, but is makes a great story.

Might be true. That's the concept of infant mortality. It's a statistical fact that a part that was improperly manufactured will tend to fail in the first part of its service life.