connectors - wire guage
I prefer ring lugs because you must unscrew the nut off the binding posts completely to remove them. Although with most consumer gear you cant do that. I also like spades. Or plain bare wire. I dont care much for bannana's
really its what You prefer
Bannana's are the easiest. Bare wire is the hardest but cheapest.
You need to be careful with spades; if you don't crimp correctly you effectively are using a much higher gauge wire.
Both the nut posts and reguglar screw posets with bare wire make good connections. But again, becuase of the closenees of some/most speaker posts you need to becarefuly of whisker wires and resulting whisker shorts.
You can tin the ends pf bare wire, but if you over-tin an glob the solder you are worst off.
Some off the newer locking banana make a very secure physical and good conducting electrical connections. You might want to relook your thought on banana plugs
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You pay more , but if you are not a DIY on end connectors , you can get exact calbe lengths with very secure connections from reputable cable/wire vendors such as bluejeancables on monoprice.
http://www.bluejeanscable.com/
http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10239&cs_id=1023901&p_id=2789&seq=1&format=2
If you have extra $$$ to burn on cables Kimber Kables makes very good but very expensive cables.
http://www.kimber.com/
10 gauge wire is a noverkill , you get absolutely no additional audio benfent by going to such a arge gauge. But everyone has thier own thought about cable bigger is better more expensive is better. But the scientific fact is that copper is copper and you can't change it's physical properties. Even 12 gauge is much more than needed. But just to provide you with a very,very quick reason , sse below:
Assuming typical cable run is 25ft or less, but for simplicity I will only compare 25ft.
Gauge 25ft resistance wire %wire rest 8ohm %wire restistance 4 ohm
10............ 0.0295 ....................... 0.36 % .................. 0.73 %
12............ 0.04675 ..................... 0.58 %................... 1.16 %
14............ 0.07425 ..................... 0.91 %................... 1.82%
So your ears must be phenomenal if you a hear a change of less than 2%.
Even look at the audioholics wire length recomendations, which by the way are ultra conservative
http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/speaker-cable-gauge
Speaker Impedance 8 Ohm Load ................4 Ohm Load
Wire Gauge................ Distance (ft).......... Distance (ft)
Gauge 8ohm max rec distance 4ohm max recommended distance
18 AWG................. 10 ..................................5
16 AWG.................. 20................................. 10
14 AWG.................. 35................................. 18
12 AWG.................. 60.................................
30
10 AWG................. 100................................. 50
So even with a 4 ohm speaker load Audioholics recommends 12 AWG for up to 30 foot runs.
