How important are speaker cables to the sound emanating from the speakers?

dave_b - Many cable designers other than Bruce Brisson have patents on cable design, including: Noel Lee (Monster), William E. Low (Audioquest), David Magnan, Ray Kimber, and George Cardas to name few.

Also, Brisson did not "start[] the whole high end cable thing" - Brisson started the whole "pay obscene amounts of money for high end audio cable" thing with the MIT music hose.  I need to pull out my old TAS issues to double check, but if I recall correctly, there had not been an interconnect that retailed for more than $100 / m prior to the time the MI-330 came out - the MI-330 retailed for what was then an astronomical $350 / m.   

Generally, the first recognized "high end" cable was the Polk Cobra speaker cable from Japan (which was demoed at the June 1976 Chicago CES), followed shortly thereafter by Bob Fulton's cable.   Kimber Kable and Audioquest also predated MIT by several years (Brisson licensed his first designs to Monster in 1981, and did not start MIT until 1984)..  

Brisson was not even the first to use networks to reduce time misalignment / phase shift in speaker cables - Matt Polk got a patent on that basic idea in 1979 (although Brisson used a different implementation).

Please note I am not saying MIT makes bad cables, just there are many other talented designers out there, several of whom predate MIT.

I'll take your word for the detailed history lesson, but as I recall Brisson's work for Monster produced the Monster Interlink Reference cable which was a watershed for audiophiles at the time and used group delay/Varilay construction?  Bruce then formed MIT and has continued to advance the state of the art to this day....I'm not talking Hocus Pocus New Age crap like Cardas and the like, but demonstrable improvements in signal transmission.  Audioquest and Transparent have some good cables but MIT really blows out the walls and the dynamic constraints inherent in other cables, not to mention the tonal accuracy preserved via MIT cables.

rzado may be right, but the first specialty high end cable I remembering hearing of (via Gordon Holt at Stereophile) was the Fulton Brown, in '75 or so. I may be mistaken about the exact timing, but I seem to recall reading about the problems with the Polk cable (it's extremely high capacitance caused many amplifiers to become unstable and oscillate) after the Fulton was introduced.

Peter Aczel from Audio Critic did an issue on speaker cables, showing that the resistance, capacitance and inductance of a cable, in combination with the electrical characteristics of the amplifier and speakers, can have very large effects on frequency response, which is clearly audible.  For example, and I hope I'm getting this right, cables with high inductance will, in many systems, cause a dip in high frequencies.  Unfortunately, given the variables in speakers and amps, one can never tell what the outcome in your system will be without audition.  

Roger Sanders makes a speaker cable optimized specifically for Electrostatics. He explains the difference between the electrical characteristics they present to a power amp versus that presented by non-ESLs (the voltage versus current paradigm), and the related characteristics the cables should have to optimize the amp/speaker interface.