The characteristics of the cable itself are readily measured independent of the source and load using typical test equipment like four-wire ohmmeters to measure resistance and either an LCR meter or VNA (vector network analyzer) to measure L, C, and impedance.
This has all been said above, and my apologies for repeating since I have not read the whole thread (work + dealing with almost a foot of snow coming down), but some general comments:
- Interconnects are typically coax like RG-59, RG-6 or similar cables for RCA, or twisted pairs (perhaps with shield) for XLR cables. The source is usually low-impedance (few ohms to perhaps 1k-ohm), and load high-impedance (typ 10k to 100k ohms), with bandwidth in the MHz region or above for typical consumer lengths. See e.g. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/interconnect-bandwidth.25441/ The resistance, capacitance, and inductance of the cable is essentially a "don't-care" at audio frequencies. These cables are designed to carry GHz RF signals.
- Speaker cables tend to be two large-gage (low AWG number) unshielded conductors side-by-side. They usually have have much lower resistance than interconnects due to their larger size (cross-sectional area) and for audio that is essentially all that matters. The large size and parallel construction tends to provide comparable to lower L (inductance) and C (capacitance) but much lower resistance. Lower R is important because source and load impedances tend to be very low (<<1 ohm amp source, usually few ohms to few tens of ohms speaker load), and the low impedances make L and C practically irrelevant since bandwidth is so very low (~20 kHz). See e.g. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...amping-factor-and-speakers.23968/#post-807327 to see how amplifier + speaker cable impedance can impact the frequency response. It is usually dominated by the amplifier's output impedance and speaker load so reasonable speaker cables will work almost all the time.
HTH - Don
Yes, I am fully aware that to avoid issues with frequency response you want the outputting device to be ~10x less than input device, which is why most amps are 10,000 and as you stated an output device would be 1000 at the higher points.
"These cables are designed to carry GHz RF signals" so is that what you are saying is coming out of the dac? the dac has no limit to frequency output? I think from amirs video's, which I did not really comprehend is higher 192khz is actually playing out to 192khz, I did not actually correspond those sample rate to what the dac is putting out. Didn't tie that together until it was pointed out. I do not want to talk about this subject, but at 192 khz you are able to hear about half of that. 44.1khz you get about 22k out which covers the entire band. Lets not talk about this though, this is just a light bulb moment.
Yes, logically I did tie the conductor size to different electrical characteristics. With the tests on audioholics regarding speaker cables that's the pattern I saw. Even with two cables of equal gauge the proper geometry cable was having far superior performance in some aspects, but reactance is acting up. I mean on longer speaker cables this maybe something to consider, not a huge deal on interconnects especially for at home use.
I think probably to sum up everything, is that even the most expensive interconnect cable with greatest measurements is not going to provide better sound but rather not create any limitations or degradation to the frequency response.
On a sidenote
I am very new to audio, just started in september of 2020, so I am just over a year and half in. Sometimes I get these random thoughts that I would like to learn about or better understand. Even after watching and investigating so much, and now even further justified by Amir and Audioholics. Just a very general knowledge I have in physics has told me that I am not going to invest a foolish amount of money into cables, it doesn't really make sense at all.
I just use some Monolith RCA cables and some mogami XLR's which measurement wise do have some good noise rejection with testing to prove it. Honestly see no issues there and compared to my old cables I do see that it[RCAs] does "sound" better which maybe just placebo. The only other thing that makes me wonder, and I do not wish to discuss it as we have no way of proving it, is if different metals have any sound characteristics as most people say. Measurement wise I do not think there will be a way to tell, and I am not sure if different metals will have different electrical characteristics which is what people are hearing. Even then that one is strange to me because you have a cable lets say is all silver, and then you put it on connectors which are silver plated and brass under or copper, and you would have to assume that's almost bottlenecking any performance you would actually gain.
The only final factor which comes into play crystal structure and the crap they have in marketing. I honestly cant even truly understand that and my current research which started this topic shows that a cable with 99.99999 cable is actually measuring worse than it's 99.99 counter-part and costs double. So not seeing any real influence there. Also considered conductor size on this matter, and the better measuring cable does have twice as much conductor, however the rest of the performance is almost 3 times as bad so the purity of the conductor plays no role.