Do speaker cables really make a difference ?

Yup.

Back in the days of yore everybody used lamp cord - and nobody complained!

Things were better back when we were more ignorant.

I purchased a used set of fake audioQuest Well speaker cable. It has 8 conductors per leg, two silver plated coppers in the pos and four silver plated in the neg and the bat packs. It replaced Kimber 12 tc two full range cables per speaker, I was blown away by the difference in sq.

 The Chinese  fellow who made these needs to make his own design and market them. They were less than half the price of the Kimbers and twice bested them. My Audio buddy still uses lamp cord and refuses to try them.  I've replaced them now with Furutech. 

yes it does, to me, but as others have said, it is very subtle among various well made cables

small signal cables make much more noticeable difference, digital or analog

Back in the days of yore everybody used lamp cord - and nobody complained!

Back in the day we used carrier horse & pigeons for transport and nobody complained.....