could somebody help me out on the benefits of expensive phono and speaker cables?

" Good question though."
Is it really with all the info available online already?

There is an advantage to various cable from speaker, power, interconnects, etc., it's metals and material used. Biggest problem you’ll run into is paying for someone’s name. A little research goes a long ways to saving $$$.
Low end equipment see very lil adavantage other than blue jeans, higher end entry level require a better cable setup for a more detailed soundstage, and when you just spent 50k-100k, hell, you should have enough to go all out on cables.

The most obvious advantage is that they can help some people get rich quick.

Best of all is that they won't need to present any evidence whatsoever of possible technical improvements over basic OFC. A fancy sleeve and ridiculously overkill plugs can help though.

Every time I have to unplug my IXOS interconnects and almost end up destroying the inputs on the back of my amp and CD player I congratulate myself for buying these 'wonderful' cables.

Any question put forth in good faith is a good one.  

But let’s see, who’s getting rich, shall we? Let’s take a simplified example. Cable manufacturer no.1 sells very expensive cables for $5,000 each. And he sells 100 cables in one year. Not everybody can afford $5,000 cables, but 100 audiophiles per year can. Plus Cable manufacturer no. 1 has to compete with many other cables in that price range. But he knows that going in. Cable manufacturer no. 2 sells his cables for $500 each so will sell many more cables per year, let’s be generous and say he sells 1000 in one year. He also has a lot of competition.

So, what do we have? I’m not including costs of materials, labor, advertising, etc. just gross sales. Cable manufacturer no. 1 grosses $500,000 per year. Cable manufacturer no. 2 grosses $500,000. Looks like everyone is doing pretty well. I should have gotten into the cable business. But the seller of really expensive cables doesn’t gross any more than the guy who sells moderately priced cables. So that part is possibly a myth.