[Thunder]

My question has to do with jumper cable termination. Is the best option spade to spade or spade to banana for my full range 3 way speakers? I understand that it is less than optimal to overlap spades on a terminal but at the same time, it is my understanding that banana jacks are not as good as spades. Further, the folks at Bryston have suggested to me that if I use banana jacks with my PMC speakers, they should be the expandable kind, like they carry.

Any help would be most appreciated before I order cables in the near future.

Cheers,
Scott

[Carlman]

I went through this decision a few months ago... I ended up getting biwires but, that's another can of worms...

In my opinion, the best way to jumper is to have one spade per terminal.  Have the wire manufacturer crimp 2 wires together to jumper to the other terminals.

If you already have speaker cable that you don't want to replace, I'd do spades to one set of terminals and then jumper with banana's to the other set.  (using the same brand of wire)  That would offer good surface contact for all connections.

For me, it's too sloppy to have spades doubled up on a post... plus it reduces the binding pressure, adds metal, etc.

I'm not much of a banana fan.  No reason really, I just like spades.  But, I'd prefer a customized speaker cable that has 1 banana per post instead of doubling up spades on a single post.

[Thunder]

Thanks for the response Carlman, I appreciate it.

I'm also not sure whether to go with Bi-wiring or single. I'm going to order both versions with the understanding that I can send the one I don't like back for a full refund. Should be an interesting test - hopefully I'll like at least one of them
 
FYI, I spoke to the Director of Product Development at Audience cables (I'm purchasing au24), he suggested that I use a single run of wire and connect it to the tweeter, take a spade to spade jumper to connect the midrange from the tweeter and finally, to use a banana to spade jumper to connect the bass driver to the tweeter. His own experience suggests that having two spades on a single terminal is preferable to a banana connection, particularly for mid range and tweeter - that's why he suggested the banana connection for the bass driver only.

What was your own learning on biwire vs single wire?

[Carlman]

One thing I've learned is that Audience cable is incredible.  That's what I bought and have been happy with it since day 1 to now, day 50? or so.  

My opinions are based on experimenting at home using home-made wire with single and biwire configs.  For the most part, there really wasn't much of a difference.  I tried jumper'ing vs. biwire with a cheap set of cable and found the biwire to sound slightly better in detail and imaging.  

However, biwiring sounds much better than the stock jumpers that came with my speakers... and the price difference for biwire wasn't much different than doing jumpers.  Plus, I've had really bad luck doubling up on spade connections... they come loose too easily. (unless they're the really thin type, which isn't the case with Audience)

I'd do what Audience suggests... I disagreed with them about what gauge to use of their Auric chassis wire... they said I only need 18ga for an amp output... However, I decided to go for it and I'm very happy with the results.  They know their stuff and their products are proof.  I have all 'Conductor' series and feel no need to upgrade any time soon.

So, my wisdom is based on personal experiences where I had problems with physical connections.  Audience has more experience than me so, give their way a shot... if it doesn't work out, they'll do something better for you... Seems like they'd be willing to make you a custom cable, though to minimize connection issues.

Have fun!

[satfrat]

Bolder Cables make a Bybee jumper cable that would make any speaker wire kick a**! I have Bolder`s Bybee speaker filter on single terminals with Monster Cable and the dynamics went thru the roof, turned my speakers into bottomless wells of sound. No sh*t! More avenues for your consideration,,, Regards, Robin

[Thunder]

The Bolder cable stuff looks very interesting, great concept. I think I'll stick with the same cable throughout for now, although I may experiment with the Bolder product at some point in the future. Thanks for bringing it to my attention Robin.