Is Skin Effect, resistance, a substantial factor in audio cable?
A.) At audio frequencies the effect is quite small. The effect of cables relates far more to resonance than resistance in any form.It is interesting to note that self inductance actually goes down with frequency in conductors, because of “skin effect”. At video frequencies, solid core conductors begin to behave like a tube, because skin effect attenuates core flow. Silver plated copper works in video cables, basically because of skin effect. Video problems pertain more to loss than with resonance. Skin effect makes video conductors behave like thin walled tubes, thus they have less self inductance/resonance and more loss. I know that this can seem convoluted at times, but it is interesting to note that solid core, round, OFHC is the conductor of choice for radio transmitters. In audiosystemsthe whole cross section of the conductor is in play at all times, and system impedance scaling isoptimised for low loss. Here skin effect resistanceis hardly a factor. Selfinductanceand ring (resona
