Many (including AQ) claim that skin effect is audible in audio. Perhaps because of that they use hollow conductor for the tweeter, In my opinion it would be sufficient to use wire gauge 18 (100% skin depth at 20kHz in copper), but there might be something else (inductance of the wire?). Why they use square conductors for the midrange I have no idea. As for the separation of the cables - the main purpose in my opinion, is to lower interaction of back EMF produced by different speakers at different frequencies. With separate wires there would be divider consisting of the wire inductance and amplifier’s output impedance. Only portion of this back EMF will go back to the other speaker. There is, of course, Xover but it isn’t perfect. It was observed that some speakers sound better bi-wired while others don’t. It might be related to Xover design.
Getting back to skin effect - common way of eliminating it is to use multiple strands, but as long as they are in magnetic field of each other there will be skin effect. Wires placed on hollow tube or arranged as flat "tape" are mostly in magnetic field of neighboring strands.
I’m not sure what is audible and what is gimmick. In my opinion it would be sufficient to use gauge 20 for the tweeter and 16 for the rest. On the other hand I had cable like that (AQ Indigo) and when I switched to Acoustic Zen Satori Shotgun (insulated strands on large hollow tube) sound changed dramatically - imaging improved, highs became "silky" while lower midrange became more pronounced. Cello started sounding more resonant, male voices got "chestiness" etc. while the bass got even better control. Overall gauge of this cable is 6. I’m not sure why they need it. I can only suspect that they try to reduce inductance.
They also use zero crystal copper (cooled in hot forms to avoid crystal formation), but many people claim that plain oxygen free copper is OK (thousands of crystals).
Like you, I’m trying to understand, but am getting more and more convinced that there has to be an element of magic in the audio. How otherwise explain stronger lower midrange of the cable in terms of RLC?
Getting back to skin effect - common way of eliminating it is to use multiple strands, but as long as they are in magnetic field of each other there will be skin effect. Wires placed on hollow tube or arranged as flat "tape" are mostly in magnetic field of neighboring strands.
I’m not sure what is audible and what is gimmick. In my opinion it would be sufficient to use gauge 20 for the tweeter and 16 for the rest. On the other hand I had cable like that (AQ Indigo) and when I switched to Acoustic Zen Satori Shotgun (insulated strands on large hollow tube) sound changed dramatically - imaging improved, highs became "silky" while lower midrange became more pronounced. Cello started sounding more resonant, male voices got "chestiness" etc. while the bass got even better control. Overall gauge of this cable is 6. I’m not sure why they need it. I can only suspect that they try to reduce inductance.
They also use zero crystal copper (cooled in hot forms to avoid crystal formation), but many people claim that plain oxygen free copper is OK (thousands of crystals).
Like you, I’m trying to understand, but am getting more and more convinced that there has to be an element of magic in the audio. How otherwise explain stronger lower midrange of the cable in terms of RLC?