Does it matter the wire gauge used in interconnects?

Back in the early 2000s, quite a few of us were building cables, which generated quite a bit of discussion over at Audio Asylum. In response to this question:

What are the ideal LRC specs for analog interconnects and loudspeaker cables? Would a zero value for all three be ideal?

Jon Risch, a speaker designer for Peavy who used to post often on AA about cable construction, replied:

According to theory, yes, zero for all three would be nice, however, since this is not possible, there must be trade-offs. Any attempt to lower inductance will often cause the capacitance to rise. Interconnects like a low capacitance, while speaker cable shine when their inductance is low. Low resistance is critical for a speaker cable, while it is not much of an issue for IC’s.

In my experience:

• 20-28 awg wire is common for IC construction
• geometry including spacing and uniformity is critical
• dielectric material, shielding, stranded vs. solid core wire, and connectors are also important
• regardless of the connectors used, they most often get plugged into bog-standard Neutrik connectors that most equipment manufacturers use
• I often used the expensive Furutech 601/602 and Xhadow connectors (which use silver plated pure copper) are also good while for a less expensive option Vampire XLRs are good

I finally concluded that I could make better sounding ICs by using manufactured bulk cable, which will have much more uniform geometry than what we can do by DIY. Here are a few sources for pretty good manufactured bulk cables, although there are others:

• https://www.partsconnexion.com/furutech-interconnect-wire-cable.html
  
• https://www.partsconnexion.com/CONNEX-66070.html
  
• https://jupitercondenser.com/product/cotton-stranded-copper-cable/
  
• https://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html
  

Unfortunately, when they stopped manufacturing OCC wire, IMO the quality of bulk cable choices declined. Interestingly, Furutech sort of breaks the mold by offering some larger gauge bulk IC cables all the way up to 14awg (see link above) - I have no idea how those sound.

Other choices would be to use a variety of bulk Belden wire available including their 8402 cables that the designers of the SPEC amplifiers consider to contribute to the "Real Sound" they desire. I made a couple of pairs of those and they do have a nice tone. You can read about the SPEC folks and their cable choices here:

• https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/adventures-in-real-sound-with-mr-shirokazu-yazaki-2/
  

Assuming things are relatively in balance, inductance or resistance are not as important for ICs as low capacitance, but low inductance does improve the performance of SCs, which is also what a cross-connected star-quad geometry does.

I have been interested in the Helix Method that Bill linked for a while now but I haven’t had time or need to build a set yet. The Jupiter wire I linked also sounds very good as a balanced IC cable but it is a little hard to work with. For conventional balanced IC cable construction (i.e., twisted pair), it is my experience you should:

• use two of the exact same (type and length) of signal conductors,
• use a ground wire (doesn’t need to be the same quality) that is at least the same gauge as the signal conductors,
• allow some spacing between the ground and signal conductors, counter wind the ground wire (i.e., in the opposite direction of the twist you used for the signal conductors), and connect the ground at both ends,
• shield the cable and connect the shield at the source end only