stevej27, I'm also an audiophile "nut" and have found speaker cables important as well. However, have not found that size matters (at least for speaker cables, heh, heh). The geometry, materials used and the way they are put together seems to matter more.
Bottom line, as you have found, cables do make a difference. A fellow audiophile even more "nuts" than I am tried several pair of speaker cables over $3,000 and invited me over to help him listen. Soon as I heard the $22,500 ones I knew which ones he would buy and he did. And you think videophiles are nuts!
Still enjoying HDTV under partly cloudy (snow tonight?) Seatte skies, Gill