No one has mentioned that the insulator or dialectic material is as important as the conductor.
I purchased couple of feet of 16 awg, OCC copper, SOLID CORE, Neotech hook up wire with Teflon jacket from Parts Connexion and silk tubing to conduct an experiment on my Cronus Magnum.
The cronus uses pvc jacketed, multi-stranded wire throughout the amp's power distribution. I switched the wires going from the IEC inlet to the fuse and from the fuse to the amp's circuit board with the newly purchased, teflon jacketed, solid core, Neotech wire. There was no doubt that the sound had changed when I first listened with the new wire. The teflon tremendously colored the sound. All natural dynamics and tonality that I previously had was lost. The sound stage shrunk in width and extended deeper in depth. The imaging gained focus and layering. Teflon caps have a burn in period of 450 hours but there was no way I could wait that long for these cables to "burn in".
I listened with the teflon wire for a week then I stripped off the teflon and replaced it with the silk tubing. Again, there was an immediate change in sound. The OEM sound returned. The original naturalness and dynamics was present. I decided to leave the wire alone and I did not listen to the stock wire vs. the silk insulated solid core wire.
Keep in mind that these differences were noticed from wire that wasn't even in the signal path.
For those of you who heard differences in solid core vs. multi-stranded wires: were the insulators made of identical materials between the 2 types of wires?
I purchased couple of feet of 16 awg, OCC copper, SOLID CORE, Neotech hook up wire with Teflon jacket from Parts Connexion and silk tubing to conduct an experiment on my Cronus Magnum.
The cronus uses pvc jacketed, multi-stranded wire throughout the amp's power distribution. I switched the wires going from the IEC inlet to the fuse and from the fuse to the amp's circuit board with the newly purchased, teflon jacketed, solid core, Neotech wire. There was no doubt that the sound had changed when I first listened with the new wire. The teflon tremendously colored the sound. All natural dynamics and tonality that I previously had was lost. The sound stage shrunk in width and extended deeper in depth. The imaging gained focus and layering. Teflon caps have a burn in period of 450 hours but there was no way I could wait that long for these cables to "burn in".
I listened with the teflon wire for a week then I stripped off the teflon and replaced it with the silk tubing. Again, there was an immediate change in sound. The OEM sound returned. The original naturalness and dynamics was present. I decided to leave the wire alone and I did not listen to the stock wire vs. the silk insulated solid core wire.
Keep in mind that these differences were noticed from wire that wasn't even in the signal path.
For those of you who heard differences in solid core vs. multi-stranded wires: were the insulators made of identical materials between the 2 types of wires?