None or nearly none of the companies that market "wires" actually make any of their wires. They buy wire from foundries. After that, it's a matter of solid core vs stranded vs Litz, grounding, shielding, single-ended vs balanced connection, silver vs copper, purity of the metals used, etc, etc. Brand names mean nothing.
So, tell me what is a Discovery wire and what is a Valhalla tonearm wire? The Nordost wires I have personally auditioned in my home system have all made my ears bleed, but I never tried Valhalla. I wired a preamp with Discovery, found it to be "OK", but the earth did not move for me. I like solid core, thin gauge or thin ribbon, silver wire of high purity, insulated with teflon or cloth. Pure copper of the same description is OK too. The idea of using a DC voltage to apply a bias on the shield is interesting to me, but I've never tried it. Beyond choosing one's own preferences from among the long list of alternatives, the boutique audio wire idea is rubbish.
Goertz wire, which may no longer exist, always seemed to me to give the most bang for the buck. But arguing in free space about Valhalla vs Discovery is a waste of energy.
Halcro, you seem to know something about 3D printing. My machinist friend says it is "old news", only new to audio but still at a very expensive stage of development. Seems to me that 3D printing might be a very cost-effective way to generate complex shapes that would otherwise require prohibitively expensive machining to achieve starting from one solid piece of material. It also seems to me possible that epoxy could be an excellent material for making a tonearm. It might also not be any good. You mentioned "welding" as an alternative method to generate complexity, but that would be cheating. In welding you join two different pieces together permanently. At the junction is the weld material that forms an interface of source. That is likely NOT analogous to 3D printing.
