It doesn't even stop at audio cable. Ever seen those "High quality HDMI cables? The bits on THOSE wires are purer than any other 1s and 0s. There is real money to be made in selling the emperor his clothes.
I suspect that the $150 cable is there to make the $15 cable look like the "reasonable" or "middle of the road" choice.
(from experience, the $1.50 cable works just fine.)
Aside: Anybody else remember $50 6' USB A-B cables?
I think that's just the best buy/office depot "minimum price"
Fry's is one of those places that targets, well, me; They are more expensive than monoprice, but not by so much that I would delay a project to get the monoprice price.
I think they are pretty good at pricing high enough that they are making some money (I mean, I /expect/ to pay more in person) but low enough that I can still go in and buy a hundred cables for a project without it being thousands of dollars.
Though I should just shut up. I use a Topre Realforce now and most would consider the cost to be excessive.
The price point for decent cables isn't high, it's just not the absolute cheapest cables. I'd probably exceed the spec for long runs or noisy environments, too. I mainly go with monoprice for short, and blue jeans cable for longer.
Every objective test that I've seen though with tested-good HDMI cables shows no difference until that 30' mark. The HDMI licensing board recommends that past 30' you use signal amplifiers or HDMI-to-Ethernet anyway.
Maybe out past 10' you'd want to worry about cable insulation? I haven't been in a situation to worry about it yet. At 2m I'd think any cable that doesn't sync is defective. I'm not interested in paying 10x-100x the price for higher manufacturing quality control standards.