<font color='#000000'>Bare wire is fine, but not the best for durability. Spades and plugs do not degrade the signal. That is more audiophile superstition*.
For that matter, gold plugs/spades do not transmit a signal any better than plain-Jane ones. They are more corrosion resistant and look pretty ("audio jewelry"
The only possible issue is corrosion. That will cause gross errors like interrupted signals and crackling noises. You can go years without corrosion being an issue.
My speaker distribution box has those spring clip terminals into which you insert the bare wire. Purely for the sake of durability I tinned the wire with solder. For the screw terminals on my homebuilt speakers I used el cheapo Radio Shack spades. The electrons don't seem to mind a bit.
*When you are tempted to wonder if something like a power cord, interconnect, or terminal will cause some signal degradation (or magical improvement), pause and consider the miles of cable, circuit board traces, resistors, capacitors, transformers, active electronics ranging from ICs to (maybe) tubes, switches, pots and God knows what else over which you have no control that the signal or power took to travel from the recording studio or power plant to your amp and/or speakers. Will that last few feet/millimeters/small fractions of an Ohm really make much of a difference after all that? If "more devices in the signal path", wire terminations, etc. caused all that much degradation, your prized SACDs would sound like a long-distance call from Betelgeuse!</font>
