are all amps equal

Keslerd - bigger is not always better. People use very thick wire to get lower resistance (and slightly lower inductance as well) but choke in series with the woofer is probably in order of 0.1 ohm and fighting for ultra low cable resistance doesn't make a sense. Skin effect in copper starts at about gauge 18 (20kHz) and might start having some effect in very thick wires. Some people and web sites will tell you that it's non-audible but the same people/web sites claim that type of metal (copper, silver gold) is non-audible.

Stranding wires help but you have two problems here. Strands should be isolated - otherwise current tend to go to outside and jumps from strand to strand. Second problem is that even if surface area is increased by stranding they still sit in each-others magnetic field and skin effect still applies. Many manufacturers put isolated strands around hollow core reducing effectively strand to strand magnetic field.

12 gauge sound perhaps as low as I would go. Audioquest made for a while very successful speaker wire Type 4 that had single conductors and gauge 14.

I use acoustic Zen Satori (very thick!)that in single run configuration can be bought used for about $250. Analysis Plus speaker cables are also very good and cheaper than AZ. I had AQ before but I think that it is in general overpriced (you pay for a name).

The strange thing is that if you ask how important speaker cable is most of the people will say that it's much less important than IC, but if you ask which one should be shorter than most of people will recommend long IC and short speaker cable. At least that was my impression.

Re skin effect, following is a quotation from this paper, http://svconline.com/mag/avinstall_designer_cables_critical/, by Bill Whitlock of Jensen Transformers, who is a distinguished authority in relevant areas. See his bio here: http://www.jensen-transformers.com/execprof.html

Skin effect is another problem exaggerated by hype. As frequency increases, current flow in a wire tends to concentrate toward its outer surface, causing an increase in AC resistance. At 20 kHz, for example, skin depth is 0.018 inch (0.46 mm), where 63% of current flow is between the surface and this depth (see footnote 4 below). For line-level audio interconnects, the effect is absolutely inconsequential even if center conductor resistance doubles or triples, because it accounts for less than 0.01% of total circuit resistance anyway. For loudspeaker cable, there may be some measurable effects because total circuit impedance is lower, but we're still talking about increases in resistances that, if the wire gauge is properly chosen for reasonable losses, are negligible in the first place.

(footnote 4) Ralph Morrison, "Solving Interference Problems in Electronics," John Wiley & Sons, 1995, pp. 61-62.

Regards,
-- Al

Al - that exactly what I said "if wire gauge is properly chosen".

There is a lot of hype, but also there is a lot of experts and each of them claim something similar about different aspects of the speaker cable construction. If you add their opinions you find out that lamp cord from Home Depot is as good as the best speaker wire. I had cable like that once - cheap very thick, stranded and sound was horrible.

I wonder what explanation "experts" give for power cord differences - that will be fun. I don't know why power cords sound different but I don't question that they do, and just maybe not being renown "expert" allows me to still learn.

Well, after spending sometime on the order form I pushed the button to order those cables with the before mentioned company, I just be d.... PayPal poped up and didn't want my credit card... I did not ask for PayPal, will not do business with them, just want to put the order on my card. I called Jean explained the problem, they said they were about to close for the day. I don't have a lot patience, so I went over to Audio Advisor got some Black Mamba II, and spent even more. I no longer have just wire.

Keslerd, you'll be surprised at the wide range of price for interconnects, speaker/power cables and vibration isolators. Price to performance relationship tend to correspond much better for equipment than for these peripheral items. It might save you money to do a little internet research on how these peripheral performs (opinions from professional reviewers) before buying. When I began my venture into the expensive audiophile world, with equipment in the $1000-2000 range, peripherals at $50-100 seem to best serve the equipment. It works up in price as I slowly get better equipment. These peripherals are highly important to faithfully transport and protect the sound that your equipment is trying to give you, but you have to be careful on which one to pick so you don't loose that price edge advantage. Sorry if this comes a little late.