If you believe Malcolm Omar Hawksford, "The Essex Echo", generally regarded as the one and only classic article on cable theory, interconnect wire should be thin. But speaker cables should in general be thick, and as short as possible, which is not to say that the individual wires in them should be thick. Thick wires in any cable bring on "skin effect", which surely everyone agrees is bad. Many prestigious IC's of yore, and for all I know some today, have wire in them that's MUCH too thick, if Hawksford is right, and 24 gauge may be a step in the right direction but wouldn't be counted as thin by good cable designers today.
