Will the receiver speaker hookup idiocy end anytime soon?

u can use banana plugs u know..

You only need to do it once!

Banana plugs will take you about 15 seconds or less to connect all 5 speakers to your terminals.

a name?
an english billiard difference between the spelling 'latter' and 'ladder' ?

most people only touch it once or twice.
swapping speakers takes time and not much listening of long duration is happening.

i agree that it is enough to go cross eyed about when there isnt enough room to relax your fingers and your eyeballs in synch together.
i've sweat feeling shafted inserting wires too.

did they forget they raised us hyper as the pepsi generation?

Why I couldn't tell you, but have been frustrated each time I make changes or move the units that have those double row versions especially, but often it's partly the location of my avr, too. I have since opted for banana plugs as at one point I was swapping things in and out a lot and couldn't take it no more. I've seen 'em spread out in a long single line, like my Onkyo, which is a bit easier than the double row ones. RCA type amp preouts are even easier (don't have to install the banana plug to the wire) but my older amps don't have the banana plug option on their binding posts, tho and probably not all avrs do either.

Economics.
Those speaker connectors usually are grouped by two because of readily available connectors, which have to be grouped together onto a circuit board, because this saves wiring cost.
Some more expensive units will have them hand wired, which allows a different spacing and more generous grouping.
Back plate space is another thing.
Today's bigger AVRs are so feature rich, that they have trouble getting all the needed connectors for a given size onto that back panel.
Edited by gurkey - 12/3/12 at 2:06pm

A switch to superior connectors (Neutrik Speakon) would be nice, but they take up more room than posts so it'll probably never happen. Phoenix connectors would be fine, too, but dealers would scream at all the margin they're losing from people who buy expensive bananas or spades.

What would be nice is if there were an agreed-upon banana spacing convention - there WAS, but it was the same as the power outlets in most of the world, and the EU banned such double-bananas with the effect of making "standard" spaced binding posts basically nonexistent - so that firms could offer double-bananas again. At least then one doesn't have to worry about the poles touching..

Also, AVR's should lose the collars around the posts, so people with depth limits in their cabinets can use spades instead of bananas.
Edited by DS-21 - 12/3/12 at 9:51am

There is a 4-pair Speakon that is the same size as the ones for one and two speakers, It has 8 isolated conductors.

Two of these would cover a 7.1 receiver including a passive sub and would be much smaller than the corresponding field of banana jacks.

There is enough unused space on the back of most receivers to handle two of these and the "cast of thousands" of 5-way binding posts,

The plug part is called the NL8FC and superficially it looks like all the rest. It has some keyways to keep it from being mated with the wrong socket.

True, but the 8-pole ones are a bit confusing to wire up. Lots of room for user error. That's why I think they're used a lot less. Stereo pro amps will have NL4 sockets, but my experience with late model multichannel pro amps is that they have either multiple NL4 sockets, or more commonly Phoenix terminals (e.g. ElectroVoice CPS, the 1RU 8-channel LexiCrown twins).

For someone who knows what s/he's doing and can create a labeling scheme that will ensure anyone else who disconnects things will put them back properly, the 8-pole ones are perfectly fine. But if I were an AVR maker I wouldn't want anything but individual jacks for each speaker. Too much room for user error otherwise. That means realistically 5-to-11 NL2 sockets, or perhaps a 2-pole for each of the front speakers, and shared 4-pole each for left surround side/ back and right surround side/back.

Also, Neutrik helpfully offers the 4-pole ones with bottom sections in red, green, and white, so at least one can properly color-code the connectors to the front three speakers per the CEA standard.

You beat me to it. Enough people can't get the individual binding posts wired correctly or easily...the NL4 or NL8 speakONs would be a disaster in this context.