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

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.

Most of us here are familiar with blind testing, so you didn't really add much to the discussion.

Too funny Douglas Schroeder! You ask that I not take your first post directed at me personally (the one in which you advised that I not be listened to), and then in the same breath proceed to say that I "didn't really add much to the discussion."

LOL! How many times can you be insulting in the same thread?

Whether you have patience for blind testing or not does not excuse good manners. I've been reading the Audiogon boards for over 12 years now and find your deportment to be at odds with most others here.

And I could make the same indictment about your post not really adding much to the discussion because most of us here are familiar with how important many people say that cables are.

But were we addressing "most of us here" in the Audiogon community, or the original poster?? The latter I think.