I'm not entirely sure that Tutordennis' 2nd sentence is entirely wrong. Pairs in cables and IC's may be able to be like shoes sometimes, like scissors at others. From a prescriptivist point of view, there would be no ambiguity, but I think I have heard of some speaking of a pair of interconnects when only one wire was in hand? Too bad the OED online is subscription only.
I have a vocabulary question.
I'm really new at this and I'm confused by the terminology here. When someone's talking about interconnects, a pair means a single interconnect. Do people mean the same thing with speaker cables? That is, would I need two pairs of speaker wire to connect a pair of speakers?