If a speaker cable added 1 - 2 ohms of resistance would that be?

@nonoise 

I went to their website because the construction looked really interesting. It piqued my curiosity. When I read their marketing information, things were not adding up for me. My background is solid state physics and material sciences for semiconductors and batteries so I live this stuff (materials, not cables). It did not take long to narrow it down to what the base properties must be, what the likely material was, and important, that the material would be high resistance. That resistance is missing from the marketing material.

@pmerendino,

If these are 1-2 ohms, a standard good quality meter should get you close enough. Not perfect, but close enough.

For inductance, back of envelope assuming 2 inch average spacing would be 400nH/foot. At 6" that is 1.1uH / foot. That's just first order equations. I could simulate it in FEA but hardly seems worth it. If my math is right that’s about 0.7 ohms impedance but at 20KHz and I have not been able to hear there for a long time. Back to my stereophile phase and impedance charts, the impact would depend on the speaker. It does not seem like a good design to allow the inductance to be so variable.

Do you have any Silversmith Fidelium? 6 feet is 1.1 ohm total. 10 feet, 1.8 ohms.

I don't live in the parallel universe where someone thought that was a good idea ... but someone did.

@fuzztone 

Why?  Because there is a cable that seems to get a heavy amount of interest here, currently a thread running on it, and guess what, depending on length, it has about 1-2 ohms of resistance. That's missing from the marketing blurbs, and of course it is not in any online review.

Lots of positive reviews (not all), and of course it will be a very audibly different cable from any other cable. This is one case where there is no question, the difference will be audible. However, if you paid big bugs for a speaker with a great frequency response, or big buck for an amplifier with a low impedance output, then using this cable will negate both of those things.

Taking a quick look at some impedance curves on Stereophile, I would say most speakers have a rising impedance in the midrange (1-3K), a dip in mid-bass(80-300Hz), and then a big rise at low frequency. What happens at upper frequencies are all over the map. Just looking at a few Magico, one rises to 6 ohms then up to 8. One stays near 4. One Tannoy rises up to 16-20 ohms.

If my interpretation is right, midrange would appear louder in most cases, mid-bass a bit subdued, maybe a bit more deep bass, and highs you are rolling the dice. If you have a low impedance speaker, my math says up to 2+ db changes in the frequency response.

To me it looks like an expensive resistor.

You can measure, but the figures I posted are accurate. They appear to sell 4-10 feet versions. The figures I posted are for the total loop (both wires).

They are not buying them because of the resistance because they don't even know it is there. They are liking it because of the resistance. It would swamp every other property of the cable. I think Eric is right, it is a tone control that cannot be changed. If the most common change is to raise the mid-range, is that not normally a change that people prefer at first? I don't know if that would be a long term preference.

If the cable is 1.7 or 1.9 ohms does it really matter? The point is there is a big resistance. Even if it was 1.0 or 1.2 ... is close enough. For 8 ft it will be about 1.5.