A couple of points:
Annealed cables are often annealed in an oxygen free atmosphere (dry nitrogen) specifically to prevent surface oxidation. Many oxidants are semiconductors and may even exhibit diode like effects(remember selenium plate rectifiers?), I think metal oxides in cables are just plain bad news.
Gauge and metalurgy make a difference to my ears, but dielectric absorbtion seems to be the largest contributor to hard or edgy sounds from cables. I've made my own using foamed Teflon as a core (more air, less plastic) they sound very clean but not as warm as the better (read expensive) commercial cables.
The differences in sound are subtle and the more revealing the system the easier they become to hear. I have not had the experience of being able to hear differences between interconnects on any mass market equipment. i.e. at least some nay sayers will not in fact hear any interconnect differences on their systems because the cables are not the weakest link.
I think almost any system will display speaker wire sonic differences between copper and steel alloy wire (cheap commercial wire, the steel prevents stretch) and a pure copper wire. These differences do not appear to be subtle.
Annealed cables are often annealed in an oxygen free atmosphere (dry nitrogen) specifically to prevent surface oxidation. Many oxidants are semiconductors and may even exhibit diode like effects(remember selenium plate rectifiers?), I think metal oxides in cables are just plain bad news.
Gauge and metalurgy make a difference to my ears, but dielectric absorbtion seems to be the largest contributor to hard or edgy sounds from cables. I've made my own using foamed Teflon as a core (more air, less plastic) they sound very clean but not as warm as the better (read expensive) commercial cables.
The differences in sound are subtle and the more revealing the system the easier they become to hear. I have not had the experience of being able to hear differences between interconnects on any mass market equipment. i.e. at least some nay sayers will not in fact hear any interconnect differences on their systems because the cables are not the weakest link.
I think almost any system will display speaker wire sonic differences between copper and steel alloy wire (cheap commercial wire, the steel prevents stretch) and a pure copper wire. These differences do not appear to be subtle.