Speaker cable arrows???

So, you believe the “audio signal” travels inside the conductor, right? Regardless of whether the skin effect applies or not. I’ll ask again, the frequency of what?

While Ralph Morrison is not the last word on electromagnetism, I am not questioning his expertise, because I did read your links (and have one of his books), and there is nothing in them that disagrees with what I wrote Jea48. I am not questioning Ralph Morrison's understanding, I am questioning yours.

Why would I read the other thread you linked to. With the exception of almarg who always writes clearly, it is mainly a miss-mash of misconceptions and partial truths and I have better things that go through it in detail.

How much energy is outside the conductor and how much inside the conductor? If it 80% - 20%? Maybe 50% - 50%? 95% - 5%? If most of the “energy” travels outside the conductor please explain all the heartburn over skin effect, for which very high frequencies travel closer to the surface and lower frequencies travel deeper inside the conductor. Also, frequencies of what? Thanks in advance.

Almost all the energy is outside the conductor. The product of the electric field and magnetic field inside the conductor is near 0, assuming a good conductor. The E-field penetrates the conductor causing charge to move inducing the magnetic field, and with high frequency, that e-field does not penetrate much into the conductor, but in either case, almost all the energy is outside the conductor.

Again, frequency of what? For that matter the energy of what, the “signal.” But what is the signal? Pardon the question. The audio waveform is not traveling down the wire or cable. If not the audio waveform, what else has frequency? Not current, not voltage, not the magnetic field, not the electric field. The alternating frequency? Also, the way I always see the skin effect stated, the “high frequencies” travel nearer to the surface - but not outside the conductor - whereas lower frequencies travel closer to the center of the conductor. Is that completely wrong?

That's the way I have always read it. 

https://www.belden.com/blog/broadcast/understanding-skin-effect-and-frequency

So, you believe the “audio signal” travels inside the conductor, right? Regardless of whether the skin effect applies or not. I’ll ask again, the frequency of what?

It's moot where the "signal" moves, what matters is if the effects are relevant at the frequencies of interest in the system in which they are installed. All cables in a given system will have some directional aspects at high enough frequencies, but a 10 foot cable at 2/3 the speed of light means the signal takes 10 nanoseconds from the amp to the speakers, and neither the amplifier nor the speaker are a set impedance, and they certainly are not "matched".  Any transmission line effects will be 100's of db below the signal.

So what else could be "directional"?  Pretty much all that is left, absent intentional directionality (i.e. added RLC elements), is differences in lumped bulk RLC parameters based on the direction. However, the bulk RLC of any half-decent cable should be such that frequency dependent impact on transmission is a fraction of a db, meaning also no detectable phase shift by any human on the planet (we are terrible at detecting phase-shift that is the same on both channels), and since directional changes in the bulk RLC are orders of magnitude less that the bulk RLC, that fraction of a db now becomes thousandths of a db .... obviously undetectable.

It's fine to talk about single crystal copper (which improves by high temperature annealing, not cryogenic processing, but I digress), and it is recognized to have better conductivity at low frequency, there is no evidence of any frequency dependent effects that could impact audio transmission.