I was looking at monoprice.com's toslink cables and saw that they had fancy connectors that look like thy are gold plated and regular plastic cables. Would the gold ones do any thing for audio quality? I don't see how it could. Also the regular cables are $2 less.

they are just beefier connectors, the gold plating isn't gold, its some paint or something to give it the shinier look. I opted for the fancy connector just because it has a more solid feel in your hand and are usually easier to grab from my experience.
So it comes down are you willing to spend teh $2 for the non-audio related advantages.

I bought a set (component+audio, toslink, ethernet, speaker wire) from monoprice, went with the cheapest grade on everything, and was amazed to find the cables and connectors are at least the same quality as anything costing 10x from a retail store.

Especially the optical cables: the monoprice toslink has a decent thickness to the shield around the fiber optic core. My other toslink cable is much thinner, and I'm afraid I'll break the fiber every time I have to move it.

How do you install the cable with the fancy connector?

How do you install the cable with the fancy connector?

Plug it into the light, I suppose?

No matter cheap or premium, etc, digital is digital as long as it gets from point a to b.

Thanks