FWIW - I spent about 6 months in intensive wire learning and comparisons last year. I felt connected to that exploration since I had researched and selected the original wire for the 03, Thiel's first phase coherent speaker in 1978. Thiel stayed with that wire and its successors throughout Original Thiel. It is CDA101 (5-9s, long crystal, oxygen free) in teflon, tight twist (originally 2 / inch, then 3/ inch. Originally we bought from ITT, the aerospace developer of the wire. When StraightWire began, they took over the audio marketing of that wire. Its successors served Thiel onward as well as many other manufacturers. Note that FST boards have a similar-looking wire, but it is CDA102 (next grade down) with sometimes less tight and tidy twisting in a less than teflon jacket.
In my re-investigation I sampled Cardas and various offerings of various configurations in various jackets. We listened blind, and I compared a suite of 8 measurements of each wire. Although I don't have definitive tests, our listening paralleled what seemed to be superior measurements. Most of the artifacts of various "lesser" wires occur below 20Hz and above 20kHz. But a sonic signature persists in audibility. Across brands and insulation type, stranded wire has a "forgiving" signature with an appealing bloom in the bass, with a bit of soft tizziness in the upper end. I would call it nice and warm. Solid wire, regardless of other factors, sounds comparatively simple, straightforward and lean. Somewhat counterintuitively, the high end sounds cleaner and more solid than stranded.
I cross-checked my findings with Stevem Hill at Straightwire who cross-checked our mutual observations and hypotheses with his physicist associates. I always incorporate what I study and strive to understand with what I hear, beginning with blind listening and progressing through a reduction of possibilities toward a small handful of contenders that sound good and measure well. That has always been a Thiel hallmark, we never choose "nice sounding" if there is evidence of technical glitches.
My solution uses a combination of 18 solid and 18 stranded in a particular twist. It behaves extremely well on the scope and in the listening room. I am hand-laying my own working samples, but at some time it will become available through Straightwire.
As a general rule, you can assume that anything you get from Rob at CSS is actual Thiel OEM, and that anything connected to an FST (glass) board is an Asian clone. In all cases I have found the Asian clones to be quite good, but a step down from Thiel OEM.
There is a lot more to wire than can be measured with capacitance, resistance, and inductance. Electromagnetic propagation interactions, electrolytic absorption and wire crystaline anatomy all do things. Some among us hear artifacts from those things. Some in the engineering arena think we're crazy. But in all cases that I have gotten a straight-ahead engineer to listen, they agree that there is something going on. Steve Hill thinks they can't admit what they hear because their understandings of the processes don't account for the differences. Therein lies the gate to audiophildom: we believe it matters if we can hear it, and the cognitive understandings must follow from the heard experience.
