I've found it doesn't make a huge difference, except that it does make it easier to push them through the holes in speaker posts and help stop them breaking. I use silver solder as my cables are silver coated and IIRC it's recommended to use the (2%) silver solder to stop migration - it's also a tad harder, so easier to push through post holes.
If you're not going to use it, chopping off the ends of the cable and re-trimming gives nice clean threads if you want to change cables around after a while.