Mic Cables
What I think is that mic cables don't make a whole lot of difference. Maybe if they're 200 feet long ... but not in a home studio (if you're running 200-foot long cables in a home studio, you've got a really big home). The main concern is that the connectors should be good enough, and well-enough assembled, for your purposes. If you're buying cables for a live-sound company, "good enough" in this context means "quite good indeed," since a failure could cost you very large multiples of the price of the cable. In a home studio, the situation isn't quite so dire. In branded pre-assembled cables that you find in stores, something like Horizon, ProCo or Hosa would be fine. This is just what I think, and I gather it's probably a minority opinion, so you can disregard it if you want.
Markertek sells premade cables, and will make them with whatever wire and connectors you want. They carry Belden, Mogami, Canare etc. and any sort of Neutrik, Switchcraft etc. connector you might want.
You might take note of the price of raw cable: Mogami mic cable, for example, goes for 39 cents a foot; you can get Belden 8412 for 47 cents a foot. I don't think that much of the price of a pre-made cable goes to the wire: a fair amount goes to the connectors and the work of attaching them, and (depending on the brand) something between pretty much and a lot goes to retailer markup, marketing and manufacturer's profit.
