Help with speaker cable under $500 for new system

Al, 23 gauge copper is not that different (0.489 ohms).
Damping factor of 14 is OK since, as I mentioned, speaker
itself limits it to <2. Atmasphere amplifiers have DF<1 and
are highly praised.

I'm not sure how significant difference in colorations would
be between DF=2 and DF=1.8

Choice of higher gauge might be more practical - 23 gauge is
fragile to work with. Also, there might be cables much
longer than 12ft where it will start playing role.

My cables have very weird construction with multiple wires
on huge hollow tube. My suspicion is that they want heavy
gauge to reduce inductive reactance but at the same time
split wires to avoid smearing by skin effect that starts at
about 18ga/20kHz. Stranding itself wouldn't help since
current would jump from strand to strand (bad) to outside
while insulating strands helps a little, but they are still
in magnetic field of each other. Possible solution is to
place them on the hollow tube - so that they are in magnetic
field only of the neighboring strands, or weave them into
flat tape (for the same reason). It is all black magic, but
at least I can see what they are trying to achieve. What
puzzles me is presence of one single strand that is
insulated but stranded again inside (10 tiny strands).
Going by engineering principles would make us to buy only a
lamp cord from Home Depot :)

"Going by
engineering principles would make us to buy only a lamp cord
from Home Depot. "

Is that so bad? There are many other effective ways to tweak the sound. I've put conventional stranded 12 gauge speaker wire into the mix with my gear on occasion out of necessity and have lived to tell. :^)

Back in simpler times, I just recommended lower gauge heavier speaker wire, usually 12 gauge, for everyone if possible and they all lived happily ever after, as far as I know.

I suspect most pro wires follow the same simple principles to produce durable and good sounding speaker wires. There is something to be said for that.

Kijanki, the output impedances of the most popular currently produced Atmasphere amps are in the 2 to 7 ohm area, corresponding to damping factors ranging from a bit more than 1 to about 4 (for an 8 ohm speaker). While those amps are indeed very highly thought of, Ralph/Atmasphere would be the first to admit that his amps are not suitable matches for many speakers, especially given that a considerable majority of available speakers have presumably been designed with the expectation that they would be used with solid state amps having high damping factors/low output impedances.

I certainly agree that the importance of damping factor is often way overblown, especially when the numbers get into the hundreds, not to mention the thousands. But at the same time I don't think it should be ignored altogether, especially when the numbers get into the low double digits. And especially when a solid state amp is being used, and what one presumably wants to hear from the amp is its intrinsic sonic character, not its intrinsic sonic character as modified by avoidable cable effects, even if those effects are small.

Best regards,
-- Al

Get generic 12ga, stranded, copper speaker cable. You can pretend you spent $500 on it if that makes you feel better.

Al, I agree but since source/speaker resistive impedance is likely at least 50% of nominal impedance (perhaps 2/3?) making best overall DF you can achieve equal 2. I would avoid using anything that can lower it further but additional 0.5 ohm would lower DF only by 12.5%. - all assuming that amplifier doesn't contribute anything.

Of course we assume that lower DF effects will be, if anything, negative, while in many cases (overdamped speakers) is perhaps the opposite. We often claim that low source impedance (voltage source) is the best, but then we enjoy higher output impedance (power source) of tube amps.

High DF chasing might not only exclude great cables but also promote selection of poor sounding amps with deep NFB.