Do speaker cables really make a difference ?

When I got Magneplanar MG3s 38 years ago I replaced the 10 gauge Monster Cable (zip cord on steroids) with FMS 1810, much less copper, but designed with multiple thin solid core conductors like AQ, and these were 20+ foot runs. The increase in clarity heard through the ribbons was not subtle. Clearest case I ever heard for the audibility of cable changes. I now have Cardas Cygnus, Transparent Music Wave and Nordost Purple Flare all under 10 feet.  I’m using the Cardas but my hearing isn’t so good anymore. 

When you skimp on cables you loose the potential signal quality delivering the music .

Not trying to be snarky, but genuinely curious, for anyone who might know the answer why:

Spending time in recording studios, ADR stages, and theatrical mixing stages, there are no exotic high-end cables being used (that I’ve seen.) No cables from any of the hifi brand names we all know. There are multi thousand dollar microphones, hundreds of thousands in servers, processing, mixing consoles, etc. But mic cables, interconnects, patch cables, speaker cables, power cables, etc., all of the cabling at these facilities (that I’ve seen) is utilitarian, standard issue recording industry brands. (The facilities are some of the best and most used in the world for music recording/mixing and movie/television postproduction.)

As someone who has owned expensive hifi cables, I wonder why a playback system somehow requires better more expensive cables than the very system where the source material was originally captured and mixed.

Why bother....

40.years ago Monster Cable provided dealers with an A/B cable switch for demonstration of their product with 16 GA lamp cable. At under a10 ft no one could reliably tell them apart. At 20 ft, Monster Cable became noticeably better. One customer brought in some (I think) Audioquest cables to compare. They were very different looking, but sounded no different. They were however 4X the cost of the MC. 0ne trick i learned was to coil the extra cable of a competitor - creating a series inductor and low pass filter making the system sound dull. The longer lengths also had higher resistance, negatively impacting the bass. As for patch cables, just use a good affordable cable and Deoxit. If youre worried about power cables and don't have a dedicated and conditioned 20A circuit and hospital grade outlets, you're kidding yourself. Even then, if the wire gauges are matched for a very high current load like a power amp, youre not apt to make any improvements or prevent any degradation. The amps power supply will handle momentary load demands. Finally, digital cables make no difference. They are binary (pun intended), they work or they don't.