Current recording engineers - what cables used?

1. Microphone. Bar none a great mic will have more impact on the end recorded sound than anything else.
2. Preamp. After listening to dozens of preamps in widely varying price points, it becomes painfully obvious that there are just some that can’t cut it next to others.
3. A-D interface. If it’s going to be a digital recording (and let’s face it, 99% of anything newly recorded will be), this is as important as #2.
4. Cable. Not that it’s not important. Just the things above are far more bang for the buck than cable.

I come from a similar perspective in that I'm a professional recording engineer with 20 years experience and a. audiophile to the extent my time and budget allow. I agree with your list except that there are a few elements preempting what you have here: 
1. Musician
2. Instrument
3. Space 
then microphone, pre, converter, etc.
Though you may have assumed this in your example it cannot be stressed enough that the best equipment in the world won't compensate if any of these elements is lacking.

I wholeheartedly agree with (what I believe to be) the crux of your post in that we're careful to capture as much detail as we can given all the budgetary (incl. time) constraints. Whether we're able to better the playback from what the end listener is capable of will often be debatable. The listener doesn't experience the same constraints the engineer does. We have minutes [to soundcheck and commit to the sound we're capturing], while you have hours [to listen and critique the quality of sound]. Yes to some limited extent, we can change the sound after the fact, but any engineer worth anything will agree you've got to get it right at the recording stage. Back to the constraints, clients expect us to make qualitative decisions quickly and to commit those sounds to 'tape' (really hard disk unless you have the luxury of recording to analog tape). 

As an engineer, yes. I spend my money on good mics, preamps, and conversion, as well as studio monitors and headphones I can trust. I use good mic cable, and good snake cable for mic and line-level signals. I believe the father down the.line from the microphone, the less important cable becomes. 

At home, I have good sources, DAC / preamp, power amp and speakers. i'm bi-amping to get the most from my amp. I'm slowly upgrading my cables as budget allows. This is tricky because I need four pairs of same or similar length cables. However in the meantime I've spent a lot getting the system updated to where it is now. The sound is on a similar plane to what's in my primary studio, which is of great help to me. Still it's a work in progress. 

Cheers,
-c

@knownothing
I agree with all of your points. On one hand I'm lucky enough to have a fully digital system. It starts with the shortest runs possible to digitally-controlled mic pres around stage. From there it is converted with excellent ADCs to 24/96k and stays that way straight through the entire production chain. The only time it goes down to 16/44.1k is for radio production deliverables, but that's with careful utilization of dither via an excellent SRC. That it goes out for distribution to radio stations which each use their own flavors of equalization and compression is disturbing. In my market however, these are minimal, and the end product isn't too incredibly different from how it sounded upon capture.

But I digress! I mentioned on one hand I'm lucky to have a fully digital system. My predecessors had tools I drool over every time I think of them: tube and ribbon mics everywhere, tape machines, huge audiences (I primarily record live performances) and better hall acoustics. While it's debatable whether the talent was better now or in the 50s, 60s and 70s, the attitude towards recording certainly was better then. Orchestras spent large sums of money to capture recordings well, conductors cared what their product sounded like, and musicians lived to play their parts with conviction and heart. Would I trade what I have for what they had? That's a tough one! 

Sorry I got a bit off-topic. I think of any crowds, though, this one would forgive me.