No, you don't need the fancy nylon braided sleeving, they are just cable dress up. A lot of high-end cable manufacturers use them to disguise the cable used underneath or to protect their method of construction and the material used, this is especially true when a cable is advertised as being hand-built or hand-made. The heat shrink used does provide strain relief where the connectors are terminated to the cable.
Is nylon sheathing for DIY cables just window dressing?
Hi, quick question. Looking to make my own calbles, like the Mogami W3104 -12AWG 4 Conductor Speaker Cable material. It seems relatively easy to cut, strip cables into 2 separate right / left leads and add banana plugs. But every time I look for a little DIY u-tube education they all add the shrink wrap tubing and nylon sheathing to the assembly process. Is this really necessary? I can see where maybe using shrink wrap from the casing edge that was cut exposing the 4 individual leads and also having shrink wrap tubing over banana plugs to keep out air, but do you really need the fancy nylon sheathing? It adds about another $50-100 to the total cost. Thanks