speaker wire to my dull set of ears do not make nearly as much difference as interconnects, even though they're often enormous and may even need two people to lift! okay, maybe not now, but that seems to be the direction the industry is heading towards. btw, what speakers are you changing to?
there is one requirement though-- poorly made terminations are a disaster at either end of the cable, especially if the cable is stiff and/or heavy. i once had a spade lug barely hanging on from a well-used large set of cables, and the store had to re-attach it using as little solder as possible. and once you've used locking bananas you'll be spoiled for anything else. but i still have a set of esoteric multistranded OFC wire in the closet that i used on a pair of SF Guarneri's while i shopped for a "better" set. at a few bucks a foot they sounded fine to me. i later upgraded to transparent ref. w/MM. they look nice, but i didn't really notice a huge difference. that's not to say there wasn't an improvement, but it just was NOT a dramatic change.
