Don't try this at home hElP

One of my finer Idiotic moments of audio. I just received from another member a pair of long Straight Wire Maestro RCA cables. When I plugged them into the input of my pre, I realized they not very snug. I pulled out the plyers and a tshirt and tried to bend them inward. Nothing, then I got rid of the tshirt and plyered them direct and 2 of the outer gold sleave things broke off. The cables still sound fine, can anyone tell me how a signal is passed thru a RCA cable? Is it just through the male pin? What does the outer portion of the RCA do?

thanks and please learn by my mistakes