Capacitance is the capacity (get it?) of your wire to store electrical charge (i.e. the energy coming from your amp on its way to your speakers). If your speaker cable has lots of (i.e., high) capacitance, they will store energy as it enters the wire (when any loud passage occurs in the music) and dicharge it as soon as the level drops (when load pasage is over). This is bad for two reasons: 1. When your cable is fully charged, it tends to block (impede) signals trying to get trough. This can only muck-up the sound. 2. When music level drops, the stored up energy will discharge into your speaker creating a signal that wasn't on your CD (or whatever) creating "ghosting" (like a bad T.V. picture before cable T.V.). This will blur the sound and cause other unmusical havoc. Capacitance is caused by lots of things like thickness and shape of the wire and what the wire is covered with. Teflon is used in high-end designs because it doesn't like electricity and will store almost none (low capacitance). Enjoy our hobby!
Capacitance: Help me understand
I have been trying to match interconnects with my system. everyone keeps telling me I probably have a capacitance problem with the Wireworld Gold Eclipse III that connects my preamp and amp. I have no idea of what this is, but Isure can hear the effect it is supposedly causing, a too deep soundstsage with diminished volume from the center image.Can someone explain capacitance to me? I am not stupid, just clueless.