[keith_correa]

<snip>I cut the Cat 8 into 4 equal lengths.  The way I do all of these cables is to strip the insulation and twist all of the small wires together in a bundle.  That gives a fairly fat wire.  I estimate that the Cat 6 telephone cable comes out to about 12 gauge and the Cat 8 ethernet to about 14 gauge.<snip>

CAT 8 cable has the twisted pairs in metal foil and all the pairs in an overall braid so can you please explain how you use them for ONE channel?
TIA!

[Speedskater]

Sounds like a lot of unnecessary work to use shielded Cat cable for loudspeakers. A better plan would be to use ordinary unshielded Cat3 or Cat5 bulk cable.

[rotarius]

Acoustic Research made some interconnects called pro series II years ago that can still be found on Ebay.  Real sleepers.  Belden 8402/8412 with switchcraft connectors are very good, made several and bought a pair online, almost as good as AR in my system.  Mogami 2549 with neutriks are nice too, clean and open sound but a touch lighter in the bass than the other two.
As for speaker wires, any good quality 12 ga wire as long as the connectors are high quality.
I don't understand the obsession with 99.9999% copper purity, the connection, connectors and soldering are far more important. 

Disclaimer: I am an engineer and a certified soldering inspector so I refuse to spend money on "exotic" cables.

[glynnw]

FWIW, Shindo uses Switchcraft on their quite spendy silver interconnects.