One could share to others how to measure inductance, capacitance, and resistance if they have a Digital Volt Meter. And explain the differences when apply to power cords or speaker cables.
Common VOM's (volt-ohm-milliameters), whether digital or analog, can measure resistance directly. Some digital vom's also have the ability to measure capacitance. There are also separate instruments specifically designed to measure capacitance. I am not aware of any low-cost instruments that will measure inductance, although there may be some.
I had said that inductance is insignificant for interconnects carrying analog audio signals. But it may be significant in a speaker cable, if the inductance is particularly high, as a result of the cable being long and/or the inductance per unit length of the particular cable being high. In which case it would attenuate the treble somewhat (inductance attenuates or blocks high frequencies).
Unusually high capacitance in a speaker cable can cause some amplifiers to operate out of their comfort zone, or to become unstable. It will not, however, produce the kind of high frequency roll-off I described for interconnect cables, because the output impedance of a power amplifier is vastly lower than the output impedance of a line-level component.
As for power cords, obviously sufficient gauge (meaning low enough resistance) is required to support the maximum amount of current that may be drawn through it. Beyond that, my opinion is that we enter the realm of metaphysics (definition: "a priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment"), and anecdotal evidence of differences is about all we can expect.
Regards,
-- Al
