One thing you might consider is the depth of the banana jacks on your speakers or amp if applicable. I recently bought a new pair of speakers, and they came with some very nice gold-plated binding posts. However, the depth of these was significantly less than a standard banana jack. This caused my banana plugs to not insert all the way, resulting in a wobbly, almost intermittent connection to the speaker. On the amplifier side, the same banana plugs worked just great, as the banana jacks on the amp were a standard depth so the plugs pressed in all the way. The large hex nuts on my speakers are removable, and I found some gold-plated ring lugs (like spade lugs except not open at one end, just a circular hole in the middle). I used a quality crimping tool to crimp these onto the ends of the speaker wires. The ring lugs give a great connection on the speaker side. So I ended up with ring lugs on the speaker side for the most secure connection given the shallow binding posts, and banana plugs on the amplifier side for convenience.
