I learned the hard way that you actually get what you pay for. There are many manfacturers of what is known as a SPEAKON type audio connector for connecting to the newer type speaker systems for PA and Sound Reinforcement systems. Many come in 2, 4 and 8 pole versions and offer the user an inexpensiver alternate to the "real thing" made by NEUTRIK. I have purchased close to 100 of the look alike copies from various sources, including eBay sellers. At first all seemed comparable, since I did not have any experience with the real deal. Some of our first gigs where we used the cables, we hooked everything up and guess what, no sound. Everything was right, the amps showed signal to them but still no sound, a wiggle on one end then the other and sha-bang we get sound, wiggle again and no sound. I thought it may be the screw attachment connections so we soldered all the wires into the connectors. To my astonishment, same problem. I is evident that the manufacturing tolerances are much more lax with the copies and look alikes come to find out. I purchased some of the real Neutrik Speakon connectors and tried them out. Guess what, worked like a charm and snapped positively in the connectors on the amps and on the speakers. It is one of those things that you can feel in your hand the quality difference right away. The drawback is, yes they are more expensive, however I have found out that buying the real deal would have saved time and effort trying to figure out why our mains, monitors, and subwoofers weren't working and it was ALL connector related. We now use the NL4FX connectors for our speaker cables and quite frankly have not had any issues with them, oh by the way, we have not had to solder any of the Neutrik connectors either, saving a ton of time in cable make up. Try them, you won't be disappointed at all. Next review we will talk about buying copy cat audio power amplifiers. Boy what a lesson to learn there too!
The one on the left is the real deal and what we have standardized on using, the one on the right is the copy, you can tell the difference right away by touch, the real deal is quality.