Speaker Cables? why all the hype for expensive speaker wire?

Can’t beat lamp cord. 

Don't waste money. Get decent quality cables and play your tunes. Blue Jeans Cable is economical and very good quality for us mere mortals.

I like my audioquest type 4's...they were not expensive and sound great to me. I use two pairs as I bi-wire. They have been a favorite for years at stereophile. If I had my way, I'd buy two pairs of auditorium 23's....however, that would set me back 3k. 

Lptocd - yes, active speakers is one way to go. Not always, though. I did an experiment the other day. The 'master' speaker of my Elac AM 50 no longer drives the 'slave' speaker.  I wondered if the slave was broken, and connected it to my main amp, Atmasphere MA-1. It worked OK. And not only did it work OK, but it sounded *amazingly* much better than I have ever heard it driven by the amp in the master speaker. Of course the MA-1 amp is in another league. Even so, I was surprised. And this was even with a short lamp cord, to the speaker!

Moral; if you go for active speakers, the quality of the amplification (not just the speakers themselves) means a lot. Check the passive speaker driven by a good amp - then you will know if the internal amp is good enough to match the best the speakers can do.

As I see it, about all that should matter very much is the length, the gauge, and having a good secure termination. However, when people swap cables, they invariably introduce some collateral change. For example they tighten a connection that was loose or they eliminate RFI simply by rearranging the wires. Then they attribute the SQ difference entirely to their new, expensive cables.  

Now, what I've just stated is an hypothesis. It should be testable.  Meanwhile, Blue Jeans Cable represents roughly the point of diminishing returns for me (at $1.90/ft. for Canare 4S11, 14 AWG, unterminated speaker cable). More power to you if you can hear an improvement from a much more expensive cable with the same length and gauge as well as correct, equally secure connections.