I haven't heard it talked about much either, it seems to be folk knowledge. Awhile back I bought a batch of the wrong kind of plywood and was having a terrible time cutting and thought it was something wrong with the machine. Eventually I stumbled on an online discussion thread about phenolic resin glues, and the plywood I bought had those thin black lines between the plys.

I found an old scrap of the plywood I had been using before and without those thin black lines and it cut fine. So, that's what I've been using ever since.