Do speaker cables really make a difference ?

Why bother....

40.years ago Monster Cable provided dealers with an A/B cable switch for demonstration of their product with 16 GA lamp cable. At under a10 ft no one could reliably tell them apart. At 20 ft, Monster Cable became noticeably better. One customer brought in some (I think) Audioquest cables to compare. They were very different looking, but sounded no different. They were however 4X the cost of the MC. 0ne trick i learned was to coil the extra cable of a competitor - creating a series inductor and low pass filter making the system sound dull. The longer lengths also had higher resistance, negatively impacting the bass. As for patch cables, just use a good affordable cable and Deoxit. If youre worried about power cables and don't have a dedicated and conditioned 20A circuit and hospital grade outlets, you're kidding yourself. Even then, if the wire gauges are matched for a very high current load like a power amp, youre not apt to make any improvements or prevent any degradation. The amps power supply will handle momentary load demands. Finally, digital cables make no difference. They are binary (pun intended), they work or they don't.

Upgrading to RAMM Audio OCC copper cable made a significant difference over my AudioQuest cables.

Back in the day    ...... and we liked it.

(It's a link)

Yes they make a difference.

But it is of less contribution the big elephant in your system for "sounding".

Most are connecting their speaker cable between a crossover and a (power) amplifier.

It has so much bigger impact that we use and have a big crossover between the amplifier and the speaker driver.

If do the crossover is before the power amplifier that is connected directly to the driver/speaker. That is "sounding" considerable better than a speaker cable swap in a passive system. Of so many reasons.

The only drawback is convenience, convenience and convenience.

Go active if you want a cheaper way for getting high end sound in the LONG run. Or keep switching out your amps, speakers (including speaker cables) in different ways rest of your life in hope to get a different result..

Make a change that counts or live with a system compromise because of convenience in my opinion and experience.