@carlsbad2
The resistance of speaker wire is miniscule compared to that of the speaker that the wire delivers its power to.
For example, here is what the total cable resistance of 10 feet of stranded copper wire vs gauge is:
16 ga - 0.045ohms, 14 ga - 0.030 ohms, 12 ga - 0.017 ohms, 10 ga - 0.011 ohms and 8 ga - 0.007 ohms.
The speaker wire is in series with the speaker resistance which seldom reaches 1 ohm.
For 10 feet of 12 gauge stranded wire, the wire contributes 0.017 ohms independent of frequency (less than 20KHz) the speaker contributes more than 1 ohm at any frequency (most speakers are larger than this, but it is frequency dependent). Since these two resistances are additive, the net contribution to losses and heat in that wire is about 2%. That is negligible.
Even 16 gauge looks to be fine. I use 12 ga stranded copper wire from Belden for my speaker connections just to be done with this issue.
For any reasonable length with any speaker with any gauge of wire 16 gauge and bigger the contribution of the resistance of the wire is not an issue.
Inductance and capacitance have different behavior. If improperly implemented, they could cause havoc with the frequency response. These factors are also negligible in a stranded copper wire properly terminated. Some boutique cable manufacturers have delved into inductance and capacitive loading which, if certain values of these are chosen, can cause all kinds of FR deviations (and other problems).
This works for line level cables as well, with the caveat that cables from the tonearm to the phono preamp must have low resistance (50 ohms or so) and low capacitance (less than 30 pf/ft) so as to not cause a droop in the higher frequencies.
