Are there any constants in speaker wire designs?

Kij,
That's the way I've been leaning. RLC is a pretty gross description. Doing RLC measures at frequency than doing some kind of complex 3d charting....Maybe some derivation of a Smith Chart may eventually show a pattern worthy of some conclusion. But perhaps only after sufficient data is collected.
Just talkin' out loud, here.

Magfan,

Yes, RLC is just gross description. There might be even variables that we don't know yet. They claimed in 70's that new SS amps have to sound better than tube amps because they have wider bandwidth and much lower THD and IMD. They just didn't know about transient intermodulation (TIM) that was discovered in 70's. I know that wire is just a wire but shielding for instance (as I mentioned before) can be extremely complicated.

Mjordans,

I had a few AQ ICs and can say that Viper has better low frequency extension that Ruby. I cannot imagine how RLC can be used to describe this. Not likely placebo effect since I could tell easily which cable was installed and did not read any opinions/reviews. In addition there are many IC cables reviews where they mention bass extension. Midbass was about the same but Viper had better bass definition. How we can posssibly explain tighter bass in RLC? Capacitance or inductance values are completely irrelevant at these frequencies. My current IC has about 7pF/30nH - not significant at any audio frequency. What makes this cable to sound different from other cables of similar, not significant RLC. Shielding with non-magnetic shield works against EMI, as I described before, because of skin effect. But this is only if cable is very symmetrical (equivalent field inside is zero) and only at higher frequencies. There will be some frequencies at which skin depth will be too deep to contain induced interference to shield alone while cable will be long enough to be some antenna. Antenna works effectively at 1/4 wavelength and stops working perhaps below 1/10 but there will be still some pickup even at shorter cables. Single MHz frequencies can perhaps do that (bypass the shielding and be induced). Maybe they tend to do something to modulate output driver and that's why cables might be so system dependent.

I think that one explainable technical factor, which seems to be rarely discussed and rarely specified but could account for some subjectively perceived differences between unbalanced interconnect cables, is the resistance of the shield (or other return conductor).

Although there may be others, as far as I am aware Kimber is the only manufacturer providing information relating to that specification, and even in their case it is not an explicit specification. Their specs include "loop resistance," which presumably encompasses the round-trip resistance of both the center conductor and the shield, for a given length of cable.

Low shield resistance would minimize potential differences between component chassis, thereby reducing extraneous ground loop related inter-chassis currents, including those at 60Hz and 120 Hz hum frequencies, and also at much higher noise frequencies.

With unbalanced interfaces, those currents cannot be distinguished by the receiving component from signal currents, and conceivably could intermodulate with the audio to produce all kinds of unpredictable (and system-dependent!) sonic effects.

Best regards,
-- Al