In the meets and impressions thread, Blutarsky and I posted some stuff we did with cables in several meets. Most recently we tried inserting several XLR cables in between amp and balanced APS V3 HD600 cable. All the cables used either Neutrik or Furutech connectors. We found 2 of the 5 cables degraded the sound, 1 of the 5 didn't change the sound, and 2 of the five made the sound a little brighter.
The two that degraded the sound - one was a silver plated copper and one was Mogami starquad. The one that didn't change the sound was made by Pendles out of silver. The two that brightened the sound, one was the Whirly Wisp (only 50 hours on it at the time, mellowed out with hours) and one that was almost the same and only slightly brighter was the anti-cables.
These interconnects were also recently reviewed by me in this forum as interconnects between my Apogee and amp. Used between pre-amp and amp, the two bright cables became much more neutral than when used in line with the headphone cable. The two degrading cables sounded just as bad when used as interconnects. So, one cable might work well for one application, and not for another, and some are just bad either way. I couldn't test the Pendles cable as an IC because Blutarsky went out of town for a week or two, but it certainly did it's intended job well, which was to be only used as a 5 foot headphone extension for the 8 foot APS balanced cable (to reach the lounger/Lazy Boy chair).
We did test a great headphone extension cable for $30-40 from ebay that walked all over the Grado extension. I'll have to look up the info on who makes them.
