This is a stagnant, static, "frozen-in-time" type of measurement.
Then simplifying it to "output level".
Musical signals will be way more complex with varying frequencies and voltages... So we would end up with varying, complex impedance changing in time, according to the music.
So the wire, while not having any "sound" of its own, would instead indirectly affect the other two items it links, with a varying impedance.
The speaker and amp load, would react, according to thier own design.
Does it matter if it is small? That is the question when your talking about changes which would affect a transducer or amplifier.
The ratio of how small, vanishes quickly in the IEM market.
There are no typical measurements to capture live streaming voltages of multiple frequencies and levels of AC, which is what music is. It must be a more complicated measurement, than typical ohms law being discussed here.
This thread is living inside a bubble.
It's not just old school speaker amps anymore. We have sensitive equipment and areas taking prominence, especially the IEM & DAP market.
Title is too generalized, and loses ground with headphone cable market.
I have mentioned vaguely many times about the "outside world" in which we have multitudes of cable companies using various complex sciences to make thier cable designs..
There is a multitude of cable websites information which have not been touched here.
Look at the the insane amount of design effort in this pic:
And thag is just one cable in one company...
The more you look, the deeper the rabbit hole becomes about the amount of things going on that are being tested and tried with, especially the IEM cable manufacturers.
It is there, that the complexity gets more involved.
They take into account everything.
Just a quick Google, and look at the issues of cable I find:
Here we read that the electrical energy is outside the wire!!
What?
Here we see that "Litz" addresses both "skin" & "proximity" effect.. Proximity?!
Here we see efficiency gains exceeding 50% in low Khz range.. Thats the Audible range!
Here we see that once we force electrons thru wire, we have to add in a created "electromagnetic force"!
So much for simple "ohms law"...
Here we see that "Litz" will effect wire from 10khz, which is the "Trebles" range in Audio frequencies.
Also note other types wire affecting frequencies below 10khz...
Finally, here we see that not only is Silver is the best conductor, but that it has
more free electrons...
Wouldn't having more free electrons would alude to it being more easily affected by everything stated above?
These are the kinds of things I see outside this bubble of a thread, on a random google search. They are not connected, but together they show that there is much topic about the cables that's not discussed.
Maybe the general negative biased towards cable companies, (which I believe they did deserve), is no longer a good thing, because the effort and push they were claiming on cables, are now becoming more relevant because of the sensitivity of the IEM market.
The IEM market, is the ideal market to test the interaction of cables, and how they alter the IEM sonic performance, because IEMs are having the most complex impedances and most sensitivities.
Some are having 12 drivers or more.
IEMs have multiples of "Electrostatic", "Balanced Armature", and "dynamic" drivers, all combined and interacting in unison within the same IEM, creating probably the most complex headphones with regards to every type of impedance (RCL).
So my conclusion is, that we have actuall interaction of cables, which would normally be totally negligible on other gear, now becoming an issue with IEMs.