Just got myself some Axiom banana plugs...these thing are heavy...there are like 4x more expensive than the monoprice banana plug I used (which the spring all became straight after a few months and get off hook easily), the monprice are very light, with my 11AWG cable in it, it can hold the weight very much, although from the website, it claim it can held up to 8AWG cables, these made the spring to fall back into the pin and become straight and the connection to the speakers is not perfect....

so, good thing does not come cheap and cheap thing is not that good...this will always be true....

If you plug/unplug your speakers often, it's probably a good idea to go with better banana plugs like the Axiom ones. Mine are some of the cheaper ones from Monoprice, but I don't really move them(speakers) around at all so they've been fine so far.

If you don't move or rewire your speakers often; why not use bare wire and forgo the banana plugs entirely?

I used the monoprice banana plugs for the receiver end of all of my speaker wire. It did not have the spring. You just insert the wire into the bottom half of the plug, fold it back, and screw the top end of the plug down. Then you apply the supplied heatshrink. I think they work great. (Edit: it is possible they were purchased from bluejeans cable- i got some of my wire from monoprice and some from BJC, I forget which order had the banana plugs.)

I use bare wire connection to all of my speakers.

I had them hard wired at first, as I was waiting on my banana plugs from Monoprice. Even if I went back to hardwiring, I'd still use the banana plugs at the AVR. It's awkward to bare wire at the reciever. When I say I don't move my speakers around, I mean I don't unplug them, I still tinker with location and toe-in at times.

I even use bare wire at my receiver. But the back of my stand is completely open, and my Pioneer has 7 sets of well spaced, full size terminals. So it was easy.

A receiver with well spaced, full size terminals? That's unpossible!

Pioneer broke the mold with this one: http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/StaticFiles/PUSA/Images/VSX-1018AH_REAR_800.jpg Just wish it had about a half-dozen more HDMI inputs (but I'm getting a video scaler for that). 7.1 pre- ins & outs too.

They do not look much different than the ones on my Denon and I find it a bit of a pain to fit wire in there, mostly due to the placement of the avr but still hard to reach them, banana plugs for me as well.

Michael, don't fall for that "You get what you pay for" nonsense. This is a slogan that sellers of high-priced goods and services love to trot out when they don't have any objective way of justifying themselves. There's little or no correlation between price and performance in most areas of audio.

LOL....I never believe in "you get what you pay for", and always looking at those bargain used audio system or outgoing models, my HDMI cables are from monoprice and some free from the TV or DVD player that I bought over the years, it just that the monoprice banana plug's material are too soft and falls back easily.

Sometimes ya do get what ya pay for. Cheap junk is just that, cheap junk.