Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Spade/Fork Connectors on QS8's

In reply to:

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So I take it you HAVE heard every spade, banana plug, or pin EVER made to come to this conclusion?

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I respectfully ask; what is your point?


Have you heard connectors that "sound" different from others?

Can a connector "sound" better/worse than a bare wire to post configuration?

No. However, I don't think there are any magical properties of connectors that give them mysterious powers to circumvent the laws of physics in order to improve the audio signal in a perceptable manner.

Besides, how may more joints do you want in your signal path? Remember, those magical connectors have to be connected to the wire. That's another solder joint that could be iffy.

Damn...I sure didn't expect this to happen. Geesh. I thought these kind of brouhahas only came about when discussing cables and amps. It's just a connector for cripes sakes! Next thing you know people are going to be touting the audio benefits of certain remote controls. Stop the madness!

Well it must follow that gold connectors will add a "warm" sound and silver will tend to add a bit of "brighness"

Post deleted by axiom

I think you head the nail on the head here Ken, how many extra connections do you want in the signal path? A spade/fork will never improve the sound, but a bad connection can degrade the signal. Spades/forks are used for ease of connection when someone is hooking up and unhooking their speakers on a regular basis. There should be no other need for them.

I agree. It stands to reason that the fewer "transmission medium" transitions a signal has to make before it reaches the actual speaker driver -- to spell it all out for you: circuit board inside the receiver to speaker terminal on back of receiver to speaker wire connector to solder to copper wire to solder to speaker wire connector to binding post on speaker to solder to internal copper wire to solder to crossover circuitry to solder to copper wire to tweeter/mid/woofer -- the smaller the chance there is of degrading that signal.

It doesn't matter WHAT connector you use, since it cannot -- in and of itself -- improve the sound, but can possibly make it worse. The best connectors should, by definition, do NOTHING to the sound.

Using this same logic, the best connector is no connector. A tight (and some might say de-oxidized) bare-wire connection is as good as it gets.

To argue the other side for a second, I think the reason some think it would improve the sound over bare wire would be that it's covering the bare wire, and therefore it has less of a chance of corrosion. However, I think the potential for a bad connection outweighs this argument.

I used connectors on my QS4 installs & had the same issue.

The main reason I used them was that with 12 gauge wiring the cables are so thick that you're never sure if you have a solid connection into the speaker (or the receiver for that matter) without them.

Plus, it makes for a much cleaner installation - I put wall jacks with terminals behind each surround and then made a patch cable to run from the jack to the speaker.

Wow - we delete things so rarely at Axiom, I had to get the manual out to find out what I needed to do! But this post certainly got tasteless, and for no reason that I could see at all. I would like to think that everyone agrees it wasn't representative of how we usually interact, and agrees that it is better not to preserve that sort of thing for posterity. I would hope that we can return to the regular 'Axiom tone' in the future, to keep the message boards welcoming to everyone.