Hard wiring speaker cables to x-over.....good idea?

[Thetiminator]

A bit of advice.....Some of my spades and banana plugs are getting a bit ropey and due a change. But my x-over is dead easy to access and I wondered if just soldering the speaker cable directly to the x-over wires would be better, or do you foresee any problems? Surely removing plugs and binding posts is a good idea? Save a small fortune on connectors too...there are 8 binding posts on each speaker...

See my x-over;

 

[RichShortland]

Potentially, yes... even better is relocating the crossovers in separate boxes outside of the speaker and hardwiring everything up.

 

[S-Man]

Why do you have 8 wires on the input to the XO?

Regarding your question: I wouldn't replace 4mm sockets and plugs in a normal application. The degradation of this interface is so close to irrelevant I would not sacrifice the convenience.
Looking at your XO, I'm guessing you have high efficiency speakers? Unless you have speakers that need oodles of current I would re-do all the soldered connections with a thinner gauge of wire and concentrate on getting a nice metal to metal contact before the solder is flowed. It's much easier to keep loop inductances low with sensible guage wiring.

 

[Thetiminator]

Why do you have 8 wires on the input to the XO?

Regarding your question: I wouldn't replace 4mm sockets and plugs in a normal application. The degradation of this interface is so close to irrelevant I would not sacrifice the convenience.
Looking at your XO, I'm guessing you have high efficiency speakers? Unless you have speakers that need oodles of current I would re-do all the soldered connections with a thinner gauge of wire and concentrate on getting a nice metal to metal contact before the solder is flowed. It's much easier to keep loop inductances low with sensible guage wiring.

Thanks S-Man. The cable used for the x-over is the same as my speaker cable...I think it’s essentially Furutech cable. So you think a good quality thinner gauge wire would help the SQ? For the speaker cable and the x-over cable or just for the x-overs?

I think there’s 8 wires as the treble unit is way up high and there are another set of binding posts up there for the treble. And yes they’re 106db...

 

[S-Man]

Only to make the connections easier to solder in the actual XO, where the cables are short. If you are happy with the speaker cable, it makes sense to keep it (for the long runs).
One dry joint due to oversized wire will have more of a negative effect than any increase in resistance of thinner cable.

Another way to look at the situation is to consider the length and guage of the wire in the inductors. There is not much point in going massively thicker than this for short pieces of wire.

Only IMO of course.
(FWIW I'm a cable believer)

 

[Thetiminator]

Only to make the connections easier to solder in the actual XO, where the cables are short. If you are happy with the speaker cable, it makes sense to keep it (for the long runs).
One dry joint due to oversized wire will have more of a negative effect than any increase in resistance of thinner cable.

Another way to look at the situation is to consider the length and guage of the wire in the inductors. There is not much point in going massively thicker than this for short pieces of wire.

Only IMO of course.
(FWIW I'm a cable believer)

Lol so am I that’s why I really don’t want to change my speaker cables, I’ve had them for 10 years and can’t see them ever being changed (they were an awful lot of money).
Thats one of the reasons I thought hard wiring them might be the job...8 sets of really good quality binding posts and spades comes to quite a pretty penny too...