Speaker cable connectors- which is the best?

well apparently you guys liked my last video a lot so I want to get another one going here today we're going to talk about uh connectors on speaker cable we get a lot of questions about this and there is a lot of differences both in the fit and uh the function of how these connectors work so I wanted to kind of go over a little bit of that so first thing we're going to do is we're going to look at how they fit and discuss that a little bit so I've got four different connectors we're going to be looking at today I've got our locking bananas which if you've been watching my channel you know a little bit about in fact the very first video on this channel is all about that [Applause] here we have seven millimeter Spades nine millimeter Spades and bfas I'm going to start talking about bfas when you look at the blocking bananas in the bfas they're kind of similar in appearance and if you're looking at these on the website you might have thought about this as being a different type of banana that a BFA connector will fit into the same post that a banana fits into but these are not bananas bfas are designed particularly for equipment sold within the UK and they are Hollow in the middle let's see if I can get this to Focus that's because the posts that are designed for bfas actually have a pin that goes inside of here now the outside Dimension is the same as a standard banana here's a couple problems though is that all of this hollow space in here if there's no pin to wrap around for this to wrap around when it starts to go under tension this is going to deform so every time you insert these in it's going to deform a little bit inwards and there's not really a whole I mean there's some rigidity because it is a piece of brass but over time these things will compress more and more and so your fit is going to be looser and looser why is that important well I think one of the main reasons what we want to think about how connectors are affecting our measurements is the surface contact the surface contact between the post and the connector itself and how much surface is actually in contact and how well it's in contact is going to affect our numbers and we'll see that when we measure it um Spades you know are basically the same except for the width why does that matter well uh you know if you don't know your post with and if you watched the video on our measurement tool there's a good way to finding out what your post with is but if you don't know it you might kind of just go like well I'll just get the biggest ones because I know they'll fit I'm going to show you why that's not a very good idea here in a minute and then of course our old favorites the Locking bananas locking bananas don't have that same problem with the BFA there's not Hollow for one thing but also every time I open this up I decide how much tension I'm being put on it so even if these get bent from over time over years I just push this up more tension achieved we love that yeah it's more moving Parts yeah it could break but use correctly I mean you're always going to have exactly the amount of tension that you want so let's get in zoomed in a little bit here and we'll show you some Spade stuff and then I'll do some measurements okay so on fit here's what we're going to talk about so you can see here I've got um some speaker posts these are the binding post inserts we actually sell on the website but they're very similar to what you might see on an amp or speaker if you can see here there are holes that go through the sides and that would be if you were going to do a bare wire termination but the other thing about that is that that forms what we would call the two flat sides of the post and here's why that matters so here these are the nine millimeter Spades I was showing you these are the largest sides now these are too big for this particular pose okay and then wiggle it around here you can see too big but the other thing is is like it can be in there and rotate around all you want even if I clamp it down see it really rotates around like that we don't really want it to do that if you're going to use Spades ideally you don't want them to move at all so you want them to fit over this flat section the seven millimeters as you can see are the correct size for this post they do not rotate when you put them over the flat side they are the perfect fit and they do not rotate and make sure you take note of this flat side situation when you're trying to figure out your post measurements because if I went this way over the round part you would think these are too small but in fact the that is the correct size because that's the side that fits over that even here this is too big even for the round side but so you could make that mistake and go like I don't understand your medium sides don't fit and your large size are too big well medium sizes do fit you just have to put them on the right spot and that's how it should work now of course then we're talking about the Locking bananas I'm sure you know how those work but just to review set these back down put our banana position put them in you twist them down nice locking every time really don't have to turn it very much as you can see because these are new but if they were born down at all maybe you turn them a bit more get that tension how you want it DFAS have no way of adjusting tension it's just about this size so you just shove them in there right and you can imagine like over repeated usage how this would get looser and looser so now let's take a look and see what resistance numbers we get okay so again I've got four different cables here that are the same other than different connectors I'm measuring in Milli ohms this meter is a little weird so we're not going to think too much about the actual numbers what we're measuring so much is just the differences between them so I got the Locking bananas hooked up first let's see what we get 23.2 millims that's a pretty low number this is 10 gauge speaker cable and so maybe that's good right we want as low as resistance as we can get and the connectors are really affected by that resistance or the connectors affect the resistance number probably more than about anything else [Applause] uh okay and now we're gonna try the six millimeter Spades or I'm sorry the seven millimeter Spades these are the ones that actually fit these posts correctly see where we get that I want to make sure everything is on here tightly so that getting a accurate representation of what this is getting these posts screwed down tightly now let's see what we get well that's a big leap let's check my make sure everything's tight again [Applause] yeah look at that it's even tightly fit Spades not giving me as good as the numbers as the Locking bananas isn't that interesting these are made of pure copper because they should have a lower resistance but maybe the fit is more important than anything else and maybe the Locking bananas fit is the key here let's keep going so that was about 31 we kind of wound up at see what happens when we use Spades that are too big tightening these down again very tightly those are not even loose enough to rotate so let's see whoa there's a big jump again I'm gonna check my numbers again I'll check my tightness again make sure I'm not doing anything wrong yeah okay that went back down again there we go so that's interesting let's go back to that well-fitted space again here bananas are still winning I have a feeling like I didn't get good numbers on my seven millimeter Spades so let's give it a shot see reconnecting it will help now all you guys that asked me to test stuff know how much trouble I go through but you know the interesting thing about that was larger Spades were able to flatten against the post more so maybe that is there is something to it yeah interesting pretty consistent all right that's the seven millimeters again okay let's see what the bfas do now I'm really curious you get the bridging adapter hooked up tighten down I'm gonna get these posts back in there banana position and we're gonna shove these bfas in here [Applause] deep as I can get them to go which is not all the way now let's see what happens okay we jump back up again [Applause] checking all of my tightness again oh look at that yeah you know what I did is I pushed the BFA in a little bit more and I made that number jump up and I got it back down again but still kind of looking like that bfas might be the loser there and that seems consistent with what we understand about the fit given that these are not BFA posts well what did we learn today um I mean all the numbers are low so I mean they're all low resistance the differences are really tiny tiny tiny numbers so it might not really matter as far as what it sounds like at all but if you want to quantify the differences between these connectors you can do that you can do it by how well they fit how much surface contact you're going to get and even by measuring the resistance to some extent you can see that there are differences so I would say the Clear winner here is the Locking bananas the Locking bananas have a best fit they're the easiest to use they will last you the longest and the numbers seem to reflect that so that would be my first recommendation now you might want to choose Spades because of the angle of approach right if you're trying to get things tied up against a wall it's coming at it from a 90 degree angle relative to the post whereas the bananas are going to come straight off the post so yeah there's a reason why you might choose Spades yeah but um other than that I mean why pick the bfas if you don't have a BFA post they don't measure as well they're not going to last as well the fit is not as easy to get right as the Locking bananas so I just don't recommend them unless you are in the UK and you have a specific BFA post uh steer clear of that ignore this advice telling you that bfas or audiophile connectors they just aren't there's no evidence of that both in the fit flat and function so I guess uh we're gonna stick with our locking bananas as our favorite as we always have here at Blue Jeans so if you have any questions you can always hit us up at the shop and uh keep watching for more videos

Channel: Blue Jeans Cable

Views: 17,409

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Id: F4gvs0DVTKc

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2023