CDC: Never tried square wire. There was a thread (in the past week) @ Audio Asylum (in the cable forum) about the use of "soft" silver 18 gauge "round" speaker wire (its use required twisting in order to get it to sound right). I prefer copper over silver in the signal path, though have only experimented with Kimber, Homegrown Audio, silver cables from some tube preamp guru (can't remember his name) and a few of my own designs which used 26 and/or 30 gauge solid core silver. Per the poster this "soft" silver has a warm sound to it and does not require a lengthy break in period. I would like to give it a try, one of these days, for phono cables and for an interconnect that uses a rather odd design (I need bare silver for the IC). If Toback is in NYC then this may have been the source of my silver wire (the name sounds familiar).
I have listened to a few copper "ribbon" designs (speaker cables and interconnects) and thought that they all recessed the mid's a bit. I did not care for them, but others who were present liked them a lot.
One thing that I forgot to mention about "thin" single runs is that the left and right channel cables need to be separated from each other (8" to 12" apart is fine). This goes with many traditional cables, as well, but the single runs seem to be even more sensitive to this. The same goes with IC's (keep the left/right channels away from one another), and keep all cables off of carpet/rugs, etc., especially if they are made from synthetic materials. This is just another free tweak that improves the sound. I don't use anything fancy for this (just hang them from one component to the other if possible and if the cable is too long then I "hang" it with cotton ribbon from my wife's sewing supplies).
I will check out Audiotweaks in the morning (have not been there for a long time).
