Do Costly XLR Cables Make A Difference?

to mceljo: we actually do just that - or at least trying to - with loudspeaker frequency response curves, for example. They do actually give one a pretty good idea what the speakers may sound like (in an an-echoic chamber at least) by just looking at the graphs, including spacial resolution along the x- and y-axes. The shapes of square waves do a similar indicating job for amplifiers, jitter plots for DACs, etc. However - and I think that's what you are referring to - they are only approximations, neglecting what might be the most important part in sound-prediction: psychoacoustics (and of course the acoustic idiosyncrasies of one's listening room). I am not sure if we will be able to ever address psychoacoustics through electronic measurements of the gear, albeit many scientists are trying to do just that. Objectivity might rely on the generation of huge like/dislike data sets and analyzing them for congruences. But even that sort of analysis wound never address YOUr subjective preferences. Or, alternatively, an audiophile could undergo a set of standard evaluations, physical and psychological, to determine what aspect in a reproduced sound makes him/her tick, e.g. measuring brain activities during an MRI scan specifically pinpointing pleasure centers while using specific classes of sound reproducing techniques/gear (e.g. analog vs. digital), tube vs. transistors, chip-based vs, ladder-DAC, etc.). Coming out from such an evaluation - if done correctly- should help you with choosing the type of equipment that would trigger most successfully your pleasure centers, potentially influencing your buying choices in a dramatic way; and - after all - it's pleasure we are after in our listening rooms, no?

@reimarc the field is zero when it is connected but not energising the conductors with a signal.
Maybe there is a gradient in the room as one moves up, but it should still be around zero with a cable that is driven closer to what the local ground it at.

With respect to smearing, the speed of light is pretty high, and unless the cable is quite long, or there is a lot of dispersion (which looks like group delay), then I cannot imagine a huge contribution.

That fact that many people are not critical of time delay, nor group delay in speakers, seems at odds with being very concerned with it popping up to a lower extent in the cables.

Maybe it does, but I doubt I can afford many of those cables.

reimarc - What’s most interesting is that even if we could measure every aspect of cables and audio equipment in general, listener preference would still trump. My ideal would be to meaningfully correlate measurements to sound signatures so that it would be possible to use the measurements to make at least an educated as to whether I might appreciate the product

I can always hear a difference when I know how much the gear costs and I am looking directly at it.

When one can tell a difference in a blind A/B test, then it suggests that the difference is more than thee chance of a good guess… or seeing the cable while listening.
If there are 6 dozen cables that sound similar, and one differs, it might mean that the 6 are all more neutral ones. But it doesn’t mean that we might llke the odd sounding one better.

I am using Siltech Crown prince XLR,s at the moment. which is a good cable for sound. I have not had a more pricey cable to try for sound difference but know it better then a cheaper one. At this moment i feel that changing the plugs on my power cables {black cat} to Furutech NCF make my music sound crisper. For a cheaper price than upgrading my XLR cables. The rhodiums help with the bass and the silvers more with mids and highs. My system is Parasound JC5 amp, MBL Noble pre and cd dac. With Crystal Cable Arabesque Glassmaster speakers.

YES!!

I like to place my front end components on the side wall so they are not between the speakers and run long balanced cables to monoblocks which sit very close to the speakers. This allows me to use very short speaker cables, but means my Preamp to amp interconnects are 7M. My other interconnects are quite short (1M or less). I could not discern much difference between relatively inexpensive cables (e.g. Mogami) and more expensive cables for these short connections, but the differences were much more apparent with the 7M connections. 

I ended up settling on Iconoclast 4x4 UP-OCC interconnects. These are not outrageously expensive in longer lengths (now about $4k for 7M, was a bit less when I bought them) and provided a nice improvement in detail and a modest improvement in image solidity compared to other cables I tried. I didn't try any of the Uber-expensive cables though. 

And yes, my equipment (DIY) does adhere to the AES standard.