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

Someone hit the nail right on the head a few answers in. If noise is gonna enter any system, it will be on the input side of your system. As a club DJ Audio Video engineer of some 40 years now, I often laugh at the specs quoted by companies. I use high quality RCA cables to connect components to my amplifier which is a Primaluna Dialogue HP Integrated Valve driven amplifier. For the Phone stage I use a Cambridge MM pre-amplifier and my turntable is a brand new Technics SL1200 MK2 fitted with an Ortofon cartridge. To put things in perspective, I turn everything on and with everything at idle, I turn up the amplifier flat out. All I hear is a tiny bit of hiss. Naturally I'm hardly gonna play some vinyl at that level. I can't get much past the 10.o.clock position before it becomes painfully loud. I use 4 gauge high quality speaker cable on all the systems I own and any noise that occurs is never on the output side. If you wanna spend 30 K on speaker cable, it's your wallet, not mine. My CD player is a Pioneer CDJ and sounds wonderful using  its on board DAC. Just remember that the shorter any cable you use the better. Cheers. 

Isn’t that the same stuff Nelson Pass uses in his videos?

Terms like "expensive" and "basic" how relative, but I can give my experience.

For years I just use the basic Amazon speaker wire for all my stuff because it was nice and cheap. Then I got some tinned copper speaker wire from Jupiter condenser. To say that it was more detailed is to give a false impression. It was much more rich in all the microdynamics of all the individual instruments. Made the music so much more engaging. The kind of engagement which makes you forget about your gear and simply enjoy the music. Absolutely lovely. 

+1 mglik: the Fideliums were probably the best single upgrade I made, and comparable to the improvement in jumping to a LTA zotl amp.

My thoughts are ; there is no point in spending money on anything if you cannot hear an improvement. If $5 cables sound as good as $5,000 cables to you, stick with the $5 cables.