Can speaker cables damage amplifiers?

Nelson Pass' 1980 article on speaker cables mentions oscillation among other things. Find it at http://www.passlabs.com/spkrcabl.htm Here is an except from page 3: "When a wave travelling down a length of cable reaches the end of the cable, it will do one of three things depending on the impedance of the load. If there is a high impedance load, so that ZL, > Zc, the load wil reflect energy positively back down the cable to reappear at the source Fig. 9). If the load impedance is less than the characteristic impedance of the cable, the wave is reflected back negatively; and if ZL = Zo, then the wave is fully absorbed and none is reflected." Good luck!

Apparently with the appearance of low inductance cables and wide bandwidth amplifiers what 'just shouldn't be able to happen' is exactly what did happen in cable lengths exceeding three feet. Apparently some designers recognized the problem at that time and took steps to correct it. The intent of the Pass excerpt was to direct the reader to the article itself. If you read further you may find more relevance. Here is another teaser from the same article: "Note that these effects exist with all cables. The fact that only the newer, low inductance cables appear to affect amplifier stability brings us to a point which justifies our examination of a cable's performance in regions which are simply not audible. The lower resonant frequencies of the cables having low Zo enter into the output bandwidth of the amplifier as it approaches its unity loop gain, and by altering its phase response cause oscillation at the resonant frequency." Enjoy.