Who thinks $5K speaker cable really better than generic 14AWG cable?

Yes, Dynaquest, "cables need to settle." 
And your comparison with flowers is quite apt, since my mother was an expert flower grower. And anyone who with any gardening experience past a 3- year olds (apologies to the expert younger gardeners) would have told you, the soil around the flower needs to be left alone. Surely you know that when you plant even a lawn, you are not supposed to walk on it until well after the grass has grown a bit. Soil should not be tamped down. All you have to do is read the bag to learn that. It's not a mystery.
So, in essence, you've answered your own question, although I suspect  you didn't intend to. And it sounds like you have not experienced the higher priced spreads and their quirks. They have quirks. Shunyata, on their website, even shows diagrams of how the cable should not slump, but should be perfectly level at all points. 
At some point, novices need to listen to more experienced users before registering  disbelief. And, my training was: do the experiment yourself to see the results (did you skip high school chemistry?) You also skipped the experiment, as recommended above, didn't you? Naughty boy. You get an "F".

Oh, and  speakers need to be PERFECTLY level, too. Not 1/8" off. PERFECTLY. Small inflections, inner detail will disappear. So dealer's showrooms are not the last word in authority. I'm sure that will cause  you chuckles, too. All for the good.  After all, laughter is the best medicine, non? 

"Cables need to settle!" Actually I thought this was presented as a joke. Now I see it is just another snake oil input into the overall high-priced cable joke. Do not be offended. My beef isn’t with those who who are unknowingly victims...but with the manufacturers, distributors and dealers who perpetuate the scam. My $10.00 12ga Monoprice cables do a fine job. Or...I could spend $137,000.00 on Nordhost Odin cables. Yep, I’m still chuckling.

dynaquest: Truly happy that you enjoy your system and the cables you are using.  In some ways I wish I'd never tried better cables than what I was using that were essentially straight 28awg, 22awg, 14awg, 12awg, etc...way back;  the problem is that what I've come to use as my reference cables have brought so much to the table in my system to my ears and people who have come over to listen, not being told anything of price, config changes,etc..., that I simply have to have them in the system. Every time I've tried to subtract them and go to stock cords (which I've done several times over the years and often had to live with that for several months for various personal reasons), sound stage, imaging, musicality of instruments, voices, etc....becomes literally a shadow of how the system performed the days before.   This is according to what I've heard and those with good ears that I've allowed to share in my system in my home.

You'll notice that I don't go for the reviewers' current flavor of the month in my system at all or cables....there's a reason for that. What I have kicks ass and while they cost well more than I EVER thought reasonable as I used to think like you do many years ago, I cannot deny how the system sounds (and measures mind you) when I have 'the good stuff' installed.

You are going to laugh at this response I'm sure and think me another of the fools who have drunk the kool-aid, the snake-oil, whatever. Quite the opposite actually as I was a huge skeptic for a long time up until a few years ago. Regrettably, my hearing and an open mind now having me using those cables that you would claim don't make any difference; penalties to me I guess both figuratively and financially.  With I could get away with 14awg or whatever :-) !

I also side with gbmcleod on cables needing to settle after shipment or transit, not because some dealer or cable maker told me to, or because some fan-boy on some forum said it was so, but because I have found many times, with certain topology cables, particularly those with woven/intertwined helix geometry for multi-stranding conductors or particularly for any cables with heavy ribbon compliment, that they frankly have to reach steady state and their capacitive properties need to stabilize before they start to sound their best.  This is usually the first 24-36 hours and sometimes has been as few as 12 depending upon the cable, the metallurgy and the topology.  My father was a metallurgist, a musician and an audio hound who NEVER invested in anything but bargain cables from Radio Shack or the local stereo shops beginner's rack; he would tell me that any metals that have been through extremes in altitude, temperature or radical movement have their physical properties changed a bit and they have to acclimate to a certain degree to their current environment.  Enough said on that....

dynaquest: I'm sure you are enjoying this response as further proof of your position.  Anytime you want to spring for a plane ticket and drop by with your cables, you are welcome here. I'd love for you to do some A/B here with those I'm running and bargain cables and let me know what you hear! BTW...I'm not joking!

Zephyr, looks like dynaquest is not interested in an actual test as he believes that his cables are good enough. He thinks we are all "unknowing victims", scammed by the cable industry, afflicted by the dreaded "audio placebo effect." No "snake oil" for him, nothing can sound better than the $10.00 Monoprice cables, Emotive amps & B&W speakers or Rolex watches either.

Many of us have participated in various similar threads to this one.  The cable conundrum is an ongoing source of subject matter.

If you have listened through your system with a variety of cables and not heard a difference, then unless you have an irrational compulsion to spend your expendable income on audio affectations, be happy with what you have and enjoy your music.  For those of us who have investigated various cables of diverse metals and topologies with a variety of dielectrics and connectors and have heard differences meaningful to us...yippee for us, or in the case of preferring a high priced spread, woe for our bank accounts.

At any rate, in the same way that I may look at a "great" painting and see splotches of color and you, a cable skeptic, might see true meaning in those splotches, good for you for perceiving what my individual sensibilities did not enable me to appreciate.

Lastly, if you are reading this and think that there are these absolute truths in audio or watercolors you might do well to open your walls of perception and come to appreciate the unique differences that one will cherish and another not even experience.  Viva la difference!  oh, the humanity.