I have seen videos of Cardas assembling their cables. They do not draw the wire themselves. They say the wire is drawn in the Northeast from copper mined in the Southwest. Perhaps the diagonal (ie from Southwest to Northeast) has something to do with the sound. :) Good luck finding a video of audio wire being made (drawn). Everyone holds their cards close to their vest when it comes to turning copper/silver/gold into wire for audio.
Cold welding or crimping is the preferred method for attaching terminals to audio cables. I can believe that. Heat based welding could affect the grain structure and temper of the copper wire. Soldering not so much but that is an expensive process compared to crimping. I have experience with crimping from my automotive days. Due to some issues I learned more about crimping wires than I ever cared to learn. The most important fact is that the crimping process must be very well controlled and closely monitored. Insufficient crimping leads to oxidation and failure while too much crimping can crack the housing of the terminal leading to even faster oxidation and failure. That means periodic audits of crimp joints- sectioning and viewing under magnification is required. Something that I have not seen mentioned by any cable makers in their videos. In fact I have only seen cable makers using hand crimp tools which have more variation than automation.
The less you flex your cables, the longer they will last. Stress on the crimp joints can loosen the wires over time. Proper crimp joints can last hundreds of thousands of cycles. Less than proper- well, we saw degradation fairly quickly. The only way to tell if a crimp joint is good is to section it.
I try not to think about it. Typing this isn't helping.
