@jumia : Ever since Disc Washer brought out their Gold Ens IC's in 1976 wire has become a growing market! I had some Gold Ens. Sounded fine to me! I replaced them with Cotter/Verion Tri-Axials ($30/meter). Still have six pairs in storage. Now use a mix of Audioquest Silver Extremes, DH Labs and Monster Reference. To me they all sound equally fine!
Cable design is a lot like creating a pizza
If you look at the construction of an RCA cable it can be very simple or can be very complicated. Eg. Audio quest higher end interconnect cables are extremely creative, the diagram on their website is visually stunning.
Ultimately, Cable design in many cables involves coloring the tonal signature. Cooking a pizza is all about making all the ingredients come together so it tastes amazing. Some do it a lot better than others and Pizza is a lot cheaper.
For cables, There are conductors, drain wires, shielding, Airfilled tubes, different gauges, etc…. Then there’s the copper strands which can be very detailed and numerous and twisted. So much going on.
With pizza you have cheese and sauce and spices and the dough and it’s all mixed together with all kinds of variation. Ultimately the sauce makes or breaks the success of a pizza slice.
With audio cables, hi end Cable designers are endlessly trying different ways to do all this. In the end they find something that sounds kind of nice. They may not know exactly why it does sound the way it does.
So that’s my take on Pizza design and cable design.