shielded vs unshielded pros and cons?

"noise intruded with the unshielded cable, but the sound was better—more lively and open sounding".

That is what the maker of my cables essentially said the sonic difference would be. I’ve always been able to get by without needing shielded cables. But certainly they could be a poor choice if noise /electrical sourced nterference is present. Go unshielded if you do not have  this intrusive noise issue.
Charles

Thank you each and everyone one that has responded! You distilled the explaintons so that I was easily able to understand the difference now.Thank you this helps. :)

I literally just logged in to ask this exact question. I’ve been apprehensively looking at the Decware Silver Reference and DH Labs Silver Pulse interconnects, both of which are unshielded and claim to employ noise rejecting cable geometry. Seems like I recall reading that shielding is less critical for short runs? I dunno…

Depends on the design I will take shielded every time.