This is a great thread, and a very good time for me to stumble on it. I have been into this hobby for 50 years, and of all the aspects of it, my favorite is cables. Interconnects, speaker cables and to a much lesser extent power cords. I have gone from zip cords, to monsters, AC, Tara labs, Purist Audio, and many more i can't remember, not to mention the home brews.
I never paid any attention to the solid core or stranded aspect until about ten years ago when I bought a set of Gallo Acoustics Micros for a small system.
I noticed they came with their own 18g solid core speaker wires that was the recommended wires to use.
I found this very interesting, as I had never seen a simple solid core wire used for speaker wire before, much less recommended by a manufacturer.
So I decided to try it in my other systems, and like others have said, a fog was lifted.
Since that I have stuck with mostly solid core speaker cables, I have used AQ Rocket 88, then to Tara Labs RSC Prime cables for the past couple years witch I find really nice, very open, detailed and well balanced. The AQ was ok, but much darker and heavier in the bass.
I tried some 12g magnet wire in biwire config, it was good but just too hard to manage.
I also have solid core and stranded interconnects witch I swap out from time to time, but I fine that speaker cables make a bigger difference.
Sometimes I just feel like giving my old Monster Reference 2s a try with a different amp or preamp.
For the past few months I been on this Kimber trial again, but this time with the cheaper stuff. I have had Monocles and Heroes, but I have never tried PBJ or 8TC, so I started with the PBJ, from source to amp. Really nice for such a simple basic clean design. Now , last week I saw Kimber place a demo pair of 8ft, 8TC on Ebay at a great price and I just had to try them.
I am still burning them in some more, they are not solid core, but they do sound nice so far. This is what makes this hobby fun.