This may be a silly question but...

Ncarv...Standard house wire is NOT zip cord. Zip cord is lamp wire, usually 18 gauge or 16 gauge "stranded" wire.

ROMEX is house wire which is usually 10 to 14 gauge "solid" core wire that is MASSED produced to really no tolerance at all. Just like Rodman above describes.

Paul Klipsch supposedly used to say that lamp cord was good enough.....

So does OFC have sonic benefits or is it just the least resistance that makes it better?

Loving the history here - let's not forget that McIntosh for years said that zip was all that was required...

Since Rsjb poses a sincere question which has bedeviled us all, IMHO audio is a game of inches. It is also highly cumulative - the better each part is, the better the sum should/will be. This is of course the elusive synergy.

Put it this way: if you can get Romex to stay on your binding posts its probably worth a try...

I made some speaker wire a few springs ago, just as a project. I used 10ga wire, typically used for dryer cable, and made biwire cables. I though they sounded better than my blue heavens (perhaps fathers love?)...however they were later replaced by some fine MIT's...