Explain speaker cable resistance, capacitacance?

It's impossible to predict how a cable or interconnect will sound, without having it installed in a system. All conductors will necessarily interact with widely diverse component input & output impedances, as well as the highly reactive(in most cases) impedance of speakers. There's some very good info(re: impedance/capacitance), contained in this company's white paper on cables: (http://www.analysis-plus.com/design_whitepaper.html) There are also some topics on which to click, upper right of the page(Design). No doubt: some will brand this as hype. Check out the company's creds, before pointing fingers: (http://www.analysisplusinc.com/)

Resistance is opposition to the flow of electrons in a conductor. Higher resistance basically means that more of the signal is being dissipated as heat.
Sound-wise I doubt you'd ever hear the resistive component of these cables unless something else in the system was unusual.
Higher capacitance generally tends to roll-off treble frequencies in this application.

From my limited understanding a higher resistance will reduce the volume slightly. It's also interesting that I've heard that in an A/B comparison the vast majority will prefer the slightly louder sound mistaking it for being more clear, I guess. This is one reason that speaker wire comparisons are difficult at best when the lengths are not custom lengths to match the overall resistance.

Take a look at the TNT Audio website for some interesting reading on the theory of DIY cables. Speaker cables and ICs require very different designs for the best performance.

Thank you all for your replies. I read a thread in another forum where they measured cables and came up with one very high end ic that had an impedance of 50ohm, they sounded very surprised with this fact. Why?

The resistances of both cables are low enough to be insignificant for typical lengths. The resistance of cable 1 might become marginally significant if cable length is particularly long AND the speakers have particularly low impedance (I believe that yours don't).

In situations where resistance may become significant, the resulting sonic effects would depend on various characteristics of the particular speaker, including how the speaker's impedance varies with frequency.

Capacitance in a speaker cable is usually unimportant, the possible exception being that if it is EXTREMELY high, some amplifiers may have problems driving it. The capacitances you indicated are very low.

You didn't indicate what the inductances of the cables are, perhaps because they are unspecified. Excessive inductance in a speaker cable can cause a slight rolloff of the extreme upper treble. That will typically be an issue only when cable length is long AND cable inductance per unit length is high (or at least not low) AND the impedance of the speaker drops down to low values at high frequences (that is particularly common with electrostatic speakers; dynamic speakers are more likely to have impedances that rise at high frequencies).

Does the same apply to interconnects?

No. The situation is generally the opposite with interconnects. Resistance and inductance are generally unimportant, because they are insignificant in relation to the input impedance of the destination component, resulting in negligible voltage divider effect. Capacitance may be important, if capacitance per unit length is high AND cable length is long AND the output impedance of the component driving the cable is high. That would result in the combination of cable capacitance and component output impedance forming an RC (Resistance-Capacitance) low pass filter, which can result in a slight upper treble rolloff, and consequent softening of fast transients. That effect will not occur with a speaker cable because of the very low output impedance of the power amplifier.

I read a thread in another forum where they measured cables and came up with one very high end ic that had an impedance of 50ohm, they sounded very surprised with this fact. Why?

Not sure if they meant DC resistance, or impedance at some frequency, or characteristic impedance. 50 ohms would only be surprising if it were DC resistance or impedance at some frequency that is low enough to be within the audible range. Even then it would most likely not have much significance, because it would still be far lower than the destination component's input impedance.

As Rodman and the paper he linked to indicate, there are other less easily explainable effects that can occur, which are controversial in some cases, and in any event can be expected to be system and listener dependent, and to not have a high degree of predictability.

Regards,
-- Al

Thank you for yor very detailed reply! Best.

It's highly unlikely that any cable would have an impedance of 50 ohms. They are surely talking about Characteristic Impedance which is totally different. Capacitance is more critical in an audio cable. Capacitance has to do with the effectiveness of the dielectric between the legs of the cable as well as the proximity of one leg to the other. High capacitance may cause smearing of the signal hence a loss of detail and definition of the leading edges of notes.