I received a prompt reply from AQ yesterday from a person in the Netherlands, no pictures though as Joey suggested. I thought this was interesting though. They also directed me to a white paper ("do no harm") on their website which says some of the same things. Here are some excerpts from an otherwise kindly and professional reply:
"All copper we use is Long grain copper. For PSC (Perfect Surface Copper) we polish the surface of the cable. For PSC+ we are using a higher grade copper. The benefit of PSC or PSC+ is a better conductivity especially for high frequencies.
When it comes to choosing cables, there's no one "right" cable - it's a case of going with the best cable you can. This is because cables cannot improve the signal they carry, they can only make improvements by introducing less distortion into the system and doing less harm to the signal. The less distortion, the better. The best cable therefore is the one that introduces the least distortion and affects the signal as little as possible. And this is true for all cables. And the further up the line you go, the better it gets."