I always check for that now before deciding how to terminate cables. While banana plugs are best, that’s only true for long bore sockets that accept the full plug. I’ve seen sturdy Deltrons bend on shallow sockets from the weight of the cable not heaver than A5.
Long bore: use banana plugs
Shallow bore: use spades
Really? At best, a banana plug contacts the socket along a very thin section of the spring pin, and a little bit of the main pin body on the opposite side. The two flat sides of a spade touching the two flat surfaces of the socket and screw provide far more surface contact on any spade I’ve seen.
That’s what I was theorising,
But I don’t really know,
Never worked it out,
Don’t really won’t too,
The point off my original post was,
I had the cables either touching each other, against the wall, on the floor,
(A Mess basically)
then kept apart, I could not tell the difference, had no hum either way,
then swapped one speaker cable the other way round,
Again I could tell no difference,
So now when I move things to dust I don’t care when I move them back,
If the cables touch or not,
Agree, a spade probably is the safest option, but if a banana is to be used, I wouldn’t use those with a spring pin. I would think a BFA/Z banana makes the most contact.
Yes it is not allowed to use banana plugs on amps according to CE regulations and therefore they have the warning to use only naim plugs which you cannot stick into a wall socket.
I really don’t like those Z plugs. They bend quite easily, and can snap off completely. They do happen to fit into sockets designed to take bananas, and the two different designs seem to be considered interchangeable by some. A friend had some which had completely scraped off the plating in his speaker sockets as he occasionally removed and re-inserted them, thinking that he was cleaning and corrosion from the contacts but actually he was mostly removing clean metal.
Surely screwing on from the front is the only practical way. If they screwed on from the back you would have to slide them up the cable before soldering them on, which would mean splitting far more of the cable. No way is that going to work.