Speaker cable termination options

To be honest the answer is always the same Spade at amplifier and Banana at speaker, it's the old Collector/Emitter thing, if you only need 8ft which is 2.5m then I suggest you mosey over to aliexpress and by a pair of Faux Kimber 12tc, I promise you, if they do not work, I will dye my hair ginger. The only improvement you will get over those is the same but with silver solder joints.

Believe me, I have prayed to many gods over the years and the 12tc was brought down from Olympus. And if you have a powerful soldering iron you could always replace with silver solder.

@ctlesq For banana plugs, I second the Viborg VB401 series as excellent, reliable, cost-effective connector. These are not the usual gold plated brass, but feature a connector of pure copper either plated in silver (VB401S) or gold plated on top of silver (VB401G), solderless with conductor held by dual screws. 

For spades, I like the Pangea Audio Xtreme, machined of tellurium copper (high conductivity) and gold plated as a cost-effective option. The spades are designed like a spring to maintain positive contact pressure, and features a solderless, dual screw conductor attachment.

The Pangea Xtreme bananas are the same metallurgy and conductor clamp as the spades, but are a Z-plug design, and deliver highly positive contact. I use these as well.

A very good, cost-effective speaker cable option is Supra Ply 3.4 (12 AWG) tin plated OFC, which features a higly annealed, high grade of copper that is tin plated (no oxidation), with low inductance (0.20 μH/m). The reviews speak for themselves.

@kmm84 

"I recently came out of the cable rabbit hole for now anyway. I’m very impressed with the solid feel of Kimber SBAN bananas. I tried cables with BFA as well as locking and didn’t care for them. This is after using bare wire for over forty years without issue until I became cable curious."

You're right on the money, I've been using these since 2009 without issue and the nickel-plated beryllium connectors always look like new and never lose their tension.

I've included a link to Kimber's website describing how they do it to share with whoever is reading this post and you can explore from there.

https://kimber.com/connectors/sban

Regarding the Viborgs and similar banana plugs, a couple other thoughts.

The dual screw design often will damage/cut fine gauge wire like the Supra cable that was mentioned. It really does not produce the gas tight weld I would look for as well.  Lastly, tin in fact does oxidize and it also reacts with gold and forms dendrites--not good.  When i have used that design in the past I suggest a WBT sleeve to capture the wire first.

Simple wire termination is not so simple and can let your ocd run wild.

@campoly It’s a cable brand some people like. I’m not a fan.