Capacitance: Help me understand

Although I'll probably be trashed by other engineers, I think it all has to do with the speed of electrons.

Capacitance slows them down. (Remember EE-101: voltage can't chage instantaneously through a capacitor.) Ideally you to want them to move as close to the speed o' light as possible. I think this explains why silver conductors have a distinctive sound; ie, great transients & realism.

Well this EE would like to point out that it's not the electrons that move through the cable at all - it's charge or electromagnetic flux. It is very similar to the way sound waves travel through the air. The air molecules do not move from the source to your ear they instead impart their momentum to the particle next them and so on and so on. The speed at which a charge moves through a cable is termed the propagation delay. Like sound, the speed of propagation changes depending on the material it is being propagated through. In a copper cable the speed of propagation is roughly 2/3 times the speed of light. - Dan

Although I agree with most of the above, according to standard crossover design, any frequencies effected by the capacitance of the cable would be (1/RC). If the capicitance of your one meter interconnects is a only a few picofarads (as it shouldn't be any higher), then that multiplied by the few ohms of resistance in a given length of copper is going to be astronomically high (10^8 Hz). So why does capacitance have anything to do with this. Also, if capacitance effects speed of propogation, where're talking about ridiculously small differences in time, which would make it impossible to detect any differences in transients. I do agree that cables sound different, but they can only make very small changes. Make your components sound good together first, then tweak with cables.

Once again. I appreciate the info. However two things to think about when talking about these issues. 1)the interconnects in question are silver 2) due to the cable construction which is strands (162 I think) wrapped around the exterior of a tube the lengths of the strands are a multiple of the 1.5m length of the interconnect.

Just so I don't lose too much credibility (assuming I have any), my post should have read: "One farad is high capacitance, but not as high as ten farads . A few picofarads per foot is very low in comparison to either and should be relatively inconsequential at audio frequencies." Thank you Dan2112 for saving me that post. :)