I have to say that when you mentioned malfunction, I immediately thought of "Gunny" from the military movies. Hollering, "What is your malfunction private"? It also applies to audio, many people have thought malfunctions! I like it when you pop those malfunction bubbles.
Well, I used malfunction for a reason. The connector issue was after a year of installation, the connection started to rectify, just a tiny bit, sounding for all the world like centerclipping. This was measured and caught on a scope. Jiggling the connectors was a perfect fix. Using gold on gold was even better.
The second malfuction was with an amplifier (who will remain nameless) that could not handle the capacitance of an "impedance matched" speaker cable. It went unstable and let out the magic smoke rather spectacularly.
I'll agree about speedskater's other issues, but they aren't as dramatic, usually.
Oh, and yes, in a LONG speaker cable (like 45 feet, half of it in metal conduit), we had to use 4-wire cables wound to cancel inductance, otherwise the high frequencies went walkies, and the lower frequencies were distorted via the hysteresis of the surrounding conduit.
That's an exceptional case, of course, and that's why Belden makes that particular wire. Funny that.