Is capacitance a problem in speaker cables?
The extremely low impedance nature of speaker circuits makes cable capacitance a very minor factor in overall performance. In the early days of solid state amplifiers, highly capacitive loads (such as large electrostatic speaker systems) caused blown output transistors and other problems, but so did heat, short circuits, highly inductive loads and underdesigned power supplies. Because of this, the dielectric properties of the insulation used are nowhere near as critical as that used for high-impedance instrument cables. The most important consideration for insulation for speaker cables is probably heat resistance, especially because the physical size constraints imposed by popular connectors like the ubiquitous 1/4″ phone plug severely limit the diameter of the cable. This requires insulation and jacketing to be thin, but tough, while withstanding the heat required to bring a relatively large amount of copper up to soldering temperature. Polyethylene tends to melt too easily, while the
