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Sounds good! I can imagine the extra wires in your own version of the round weave could increase damping compared to not adding those new wires, while allowing more moderate damping than the core and yarn, which might be easy to overdo if not careful. Not that I don't think damping can be important, but I try to do it with geometry and relatively innocuous cotton... I don't think I have added anything to the inside or outside of a cable I cannot hear, including shields, even with oversized shields separated from the wires as much as I can. So if needed, I am really careful.
I find many commercial cables can be over-damped and shielded....even when sounding really good, making them tend a little toward slow/dull/colored... seemingly from electrical/frequency balance draws/effects caused by different materials around the signal energy... And I get that a lot of cables can be nice with all the wires, damping, shields packed close together, but compared to not doing that, all my tests using decent parts with more attention to not having dielectric effects, give the cable comparatively better immediacy and ultimate clarity. And cotton, easily available and having relatively lower dielectric effect than many, I prefer it for damping.
As I often try to say.... I think part of the rationale for not paying fuller attention to these things is in part the long cultured habit of smoothing/warming (masking) detail many folks are afraid of, and perhaps rightfully so... for decades so many developers not fully addressing the finest detail and space needs, including timing and revelation aside from the DA conversions... and by not making detail more complex and spacious, actually continuing from habit in creating hard detail.
In this vein, I think the "smoothness" and "warmth" that we can get from closer cable construction, off materials, over damping, etc, can help hide hard detail, "good" in many settings where hard detail is an inherent issue... But having solved a lot of that syndrome here with a really good front end conglomerate that, in its pretty seriously modded state, can reveal complexity rather than creating hardness, and all the other gear and speaker modifications, room, cables, feet, etc designed and intended for musical revelation and speed... ie real transparency... from this baseline, a lot shows for better or worse.
Here, cables with close construction can tend to subtly mask fine information and immediacy... even artful warmth and smoothness with relatively good speed and detail complexity and completeness often feels ultimately a little affected rather than natural. Some power cables I made from raw cable by really good designers who actually listen, and really good materials (Furutech and Neotech), though really good, to me they sound a little off... a bit held back if looking at all aspects of the sound. So even though I like and use these with the right ends, the subtle issues I have inform my exploration, and they will likely be replaced one day.
So my old rag... I find improving the qualities of timing, revelation, and complexity of detail a much better way to solve hard detail... But to really start to get that, it takes a conglomerate of power, gear, cables, speakers, room ... that is capable enough to be without notable weak links anywhere.... And for me so far, with how I approach what I will pay for this or that, and really not liking the buying roller coaster, this has required modifications with good parts, wires, tubes!
And again, in the fundamental picture, the really good fine stuff will never be there to mask if a front end signal is not pulled without damage and truncation of the delicate finer elements of a pure musical signal.... From the quality of the stream, compressed, "lossless" to error corrected uncompressed... to the drive and wires uses, the computer, OS and software that process it (whether these are all in one like some streamers or separates).... how the stream is made, transported, processed, and output.... all cables... there are way too many ways to screw that up before ever getting to the pre or amp.
Still, part of the same historical progression of development that started running from hard detail with the advent of very clear digital... streamers, streams, DACs have gotten quite good at making it appear complete when it may be more hifi, and not fully musically extracted and presented. To me this has contributing in making it hard to find and recognize the need for the very fine and spacious nature of an undamaged signal. Until I started to hear a front end that does not mess the fine stuff up much.....I did not know how powerful that could be to the musical experience. And the other side, improving the signal can reveal how the rest of the system is not designed and tuned to utilize a really good signal, which can make hearing a better signal difficult. A circular pattern that keeps things slower I think....
Yeah, sorry... this is just where my journey has taken me, and most issues I have had always come back to what I perceive is this same basic issue of working from conditioning more than outright creative solution orientation, not based on the past so much as using our now amazing tech, parts, materials, knowledge and perception to refine our musical experience based on what we have right now!
Taking it all back to getting the best we can from cables now, so they help now, and will reveal improvements elsewhere as they come.
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