If Cables Are Not Tone Controls...

I can't count the times audiophiles have said "Cables are not tone controls".  But if we audition (remember that?) two sets of speaker cables and decide that one sounds "better" than the other, aren't we using it as a tone control?  You can call it whatever you want, but in reality we are deciding which cable contours the sound to our liking?  Or should we just buy the speaker cable with the lowest resistance, inductance and capacitance we can find and if it sounds like crap, change other components until it sounds good?  Then we're just using the other components we've swapped out as tone controls. Just asking.