(Hypothetically) If I hired a professional to weld (without tin, ultrasonic welding?) all the cable connections save for digital cabling and with common sense, how much of an improvement do you think I’d have sonically?
Let’s have an example: gold-plated bananas into rhodium plaed terminals. How muh does the contact interface mangle the precious signal? Is there actually point in welding, especially for speaker cables?
Again, hypothetically - let’s assume I’m so happy with the system that I dión’t need to switch cabling ever again.
If your connections are tight, grease, oxide and dust free then I doubt you would get any advantage from welding/soldering cables. The trouble is that unless you are conscientious these conditions may not be met. With audio during my life I have probably had more trouble from poor connections than any other cause. This was particularly noticeable in my mobile disco days, admittedly because the standard connection for speaker cables at that time was a quarter inch jack plug!
Good Morning, the choices for terminating speakers are primarily, crimp style connectors, silver solder and ultrasonic welding. We normally recommend against crimp connectors and also the connectors that use a screw through the connector body as the primary attachment method. Planet Waves comes to mind.
Historically the generally accepted/preferred method to attach a speaker connector was with the use of a connector that provided a solid strain component and the use of silver solder. And, provided the soldering iron/gun was at the perfect temperature and the technician was skilled, then the the tech could “flow” the solder perfectly to make a nice connection to “all parts” of the cable. Most of your 2-conductor, stranded speaker cable is easy to terminate. The only variable is the skill of the tech at the soldering station. Personally, I hate soldering.
A few years back, Kurt at Blue Jeans invested in the Sonobond Ultrasonics welding machine and went about having the necessary dies produced that would work perfectly with the connectors we use. With everything in place the next step was to dial the settings on the welder for each connector type that would produce a repeatable and consistent rock solid bond.
If you have not seen an explanation of this welder then you might want to see this link to the BJC site.
www.bluejeanscable.com/articles/ultrasonic-welding.htm
I personally use “welded” connectors on my speaker cables and could not be happier.
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