Many years ago, I joined a group of audiophile students at my university and we were building a pair of two-way loudspeakers with semi-expensive chassis. Students' budget, but it still had potential. When experimenting with crossover components, we soldered things together at first, then someone had the idea to use alligator clips (two each connected by a cable soldered to the clips) for faster turnaround.
The sound quality, which had been quite good up to that point, suddenly dropped to that of a cheap speaker from some supermarket. The ohmic resistance of the cable between the alligator clips was IMHO too low to have much of an influence.
Conclusion:
It must have been the alligator clips, and good contacts matter. Since that experience I like to use gold-plated connectors, but with standard cables to connect them. That combination tends to be cheap enough and works for me :-)