Interconnects: solid or hollow core wire?

Except for some flexible stuff for in-wall or something, I think Audioquest is all solid core.

I just swapped out some unmatched stranded everything (off to my vintage cable museum!) for newer A'quest balanced and single ended ICs, solid core digital (coax) and solid core speaker. Nothing particularly pricey, and I did keep one old stranded Straightwire IC for a headphone amp because it looks cool (so sue me..it's blue with groovy plugs). There is some synergy there now and somehow solid core makes sense to my addled brain. I think the electrons are happy and moving along properly and my system sounds better...the major "skin effect" issue I have now is attended to by my dermatologist.

Mapleshade seems too obscure to find at a discount (used or demo) so I think A'quest (for solid core anyway) is a better deal if you are patient enough to wait and not pay retail. For example, I found some clean Diamondback balanced ICs for $65 a pair. Hard to beat.

A ribbon is "flattened core".

So now it's "Expanded Core?" Most of my cables, according to the mfgr description, are "soft core". "Hard core" cables are tawdry. Note that silver plated carrots can be used as "veggie core" and plated animal parts strung together are "meat core". Avoid "molten core" as they can burn a hole in your rug.

I'm a veteran professional musician...whenever I hear a cable description using the term "rhythmically accurate" I cringe. If a cable is not rhythmic, it's because the dog is chewing on it or somebody with no sense of musical timing is yanking it out of its socket.

After using various solid and stranded cables over several decades of audio madness, I recently found a synergistic match to my current pile of electron manipulation gear in a recent iteration of relatively inexpensive Audioquest solid core speaker wire...I'm not sure why people want to spend 3 to 10 times the price of this stuff on anything else as it lacks nothing except quasi entertaining mysterious voodoo...if a cable is light on the last octave of bass and musical "pace" (meaning timing I suppose) I can only imagine it's as thin as a polyester microfibre, or the designers blended condor guano into the metal formula. I'm not a cable luddite and if I had unlimited cash I might buy some extreme $26,000 per inch cable just to marvel at how it looks (and engender geek cred in spades, as well as disdain from sane people), but otherwise I remain in the world of the actual, and welcome others along for the ride.

After all...isn't a solid wire nothing but a large strand? So now I refer to my wire as having four strands, albeit large ones.

I think the Audioquest theories make sense (although the science seems theoretical)...various sizes of solid conductors wound around each other....and in my audio system (as opposed maybe to my digestive system) it works really well. I assume the utter largeness and success of AQ as a company does engender what I see as seemingly unfounded criticism from the "audio-illuminati", but I use my ears for audio product testing and I actually LIKE the hard working Chinese people. Maybe I'll score some liquid nitrogen and freeze some cable and see what happens...I bet the dialectric cracks off along with the toe I spill the nitrogen on.