I've given up now. The Mark Grants just sit there, doing their job of "not doing," if you see what I mean, and I have no urge to try boutique wires now, as you cannot polish a turd if you're unfortunate to have one in your audio system...

I find Van Damme wires highly acceptable, the twin-n-screen Pro-Patch is superb for low level signals such as tonearm to amp and their fig-8 screened cable seems very good for general interconnect work, where a well balanced performance comes before absolute (impossible to achieve) detail.

I remember at least two interconnect manufacturers used to use one tiny stranded conductor plus screen for their cheapest wire, then two of the same for the next one up, then a heavier gauge for their next, then three cores (two for + and one plus drain for - ) and so on. If they'd have stuck to a low capacitance single copper core with selected insulation, it would probably have beaten the lot - oh, Mark does just that