Low capacitance IC??

Indeed.

sorry - 20kOhm - was near midnight and after a few Belgian Ales when I typed that. The DAC chip in the SB is rated to drive loads as low as 5kOhm, but at that level capacitance would become very important

Capacitance is not an issue in this particular setup with 0.5 meter cables.

20kHz impedence?!! Or is that the roll off point due to the capacitance or what?
Bob P.

20kHz impedence?!! Or is that the rool off point due to the capacitance?
Bob P.

I understand your situation. Removing the output IC on the squeezebox can limit the ability to drive a power amp directly, but will relatively easily drive a preamp. Anything above 20kHz input impedence will not be a problem. Even with a relatively high capacitance cable the Squeezebox will have little problem driving cables up to 2m into a preamp, or a tube amp. Some SS power amps might be borderline and only in that circumstance, or with long ICs do I think you might experience a problem. If you do experience it you will generally notice a roll of in the high frequencies and a softening of transients, and in extreme circumstances the sound will thin out horribly - if you don't hear any such problem and the system sounds balanced, then you have nothing to worry about.

The capacitance of a cable is determined by its geometry and its materials, particularly the dielectric. PTFE is good, foamed PTFE is better, and air is the best dielectric.

The lowest possible capacitance would be two widely spaced, bare wires in parallel, with no shielding, and no dielectric (ie an air gap). This would clearly not be practical.

The lowest capacitance practical interconnect that I have come across is the Chris Venhaus DIY here:

http://www.venhaus1.com/diysilverinterconnects.html

It works really well for line level interconnects, but is insufficiently sheilded for use as a tonearm interconnect.

For your purposes I would expect it to work very very well, and outperform commercial cables up to several hundred dollars. To reduce the cost you can substitute the silver wire with enamelled magnet wire from Radio Shack.

In short, non-technical terms, capacitance describes the ability to store electrical energy. Electrical energy can be stored by various materials, including the di-electric used to insulate interconnects and speaker cables.

Because the signal strength being carried by interconnects is typically low, it is not desirable for the insulating material to store energy, and it can negatively affect the music signal. Therefore, low capacitance in interconnects is a desirable characteristic.