I’m not an electronic engineer, but I was told and read long ago that cables for the OLD home stereo systems benefited from better cables only to a point of diminishing return on performance. I would think the same is true for today. Wire is wire and has not changed much has it?
Basically unless there's an enormously long cable or wire run or some sort of absurd unusual interference situation, there's no actual difference in sound from anything from Home Depot Wire up through the most expensive "premium" cables.
However, if someone has a stereo system, spends $100 on some premium speaker cables, and takes them home and installs them, they're ALWAYS going to THINK their system sounds better.
But when you take people have have them listen blind to the identical system with different $$$ cables, they can't tell the difference or don't pick the expensive ones as better than cheap ones any more often than vice-versa.
Basically, what happened is you had weenie anal audiophiles spending $10,000 on a setup, and then having the nagging feeling that the $10 they spent on speaker wire was somehow compromising the system - some clever people figured out how to exploit this psychological anxiety and thus the whole "premium cable" industry was born - with massive advertising in magazines, reviewers in audiophile magazines "reviewing" cables like they were brands of wine, etc.
The basic reality is that for any given sum of money spent on your system, any money you might spend on premium cables is far better spent on better speakers. For example, for a $1,000 setup where you're spending $400 on speakers and $100 on premium cables, you're far better off spending $490 on speakers and $10 on plain old home depot wire.
Speaking of speakers, the REAL fun used to start on the audiophile USENet groups when people asked about Bose.
The other thing about the premium cables is the profit margins on them are HUGE, and salespeople also are very big on pressuring people into buying them as well, sort of like the pressure to buy extended warranties.