pas008"engineering paper from 1991.
http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=5975
Twelve cables are tested from Levinson to Kimber and including car jump leads and lamp cable, from $2 to $419 per metre. The results are based on the theory that loudspeaker cable should transmit all frequencies, unscathed to any speaker from any amplifier and loss is due to resistance. There is an assumption that letting through more frequencies with less distortion will sound better. But that seems reasonable to me.
The best performance was with multi core cables. The car jump leads did not do well and cable intended for digital transmission did! The most expensive cable does not get a mention in the conclusions, but the cheapest is praised for its performance and Kimber does well. Sadly there is not a definitive list of the cost of the cables and their performance, so it is not clear as to whether cost equals performance, but the suggestion is that construction equals performance."
HawgA lot of the premium you'll see tacked on to 'Audiophile' cables comes in the forms of fit & finish, better materials, and the fact that they are usually handmade - and not in China.
KK cables will arrive to you with no defects and will look like eye candy compared to HD or Lowe's zipcord (especially anything with Ag), made with the best possible materials, and put together by one of a handful of great guys in Ogden, UT. They are a premium product and are definitely not intended to fly in the same product category as $0.55/ft stuff. I'm sure that CEntrance takes the same amount of care in providing you with their cables, especially based on the reviews I've seen on their electronics.
As an electrical engineer, there are a ton of things that effect cabling. It depends on many factors, including the environment in your home and the quality on your power grid. My opinion is: buy what you like (economical, pretty, expensive, etc...), if you get interference, try something else that has different geometry. Cables do measure and test differently, depending on geometry. Whether you can hear that is up to opinion, but the numbers do differ on the LCR meter.