Absolutely. The hot setup for anyone who is going to do any amount of studio or live sound work is to lay in a couple of spools of cable, a couple of bags of connectors, and roll your own. This has a number of advantages: it can be a boatload cheaper, you can make the cables the exact length you need for the application (which can cut down dramatically on the amount of rope-salad that inevitably grows between a multitrack, a mixing board, and any outboard gear), and you will very likely have in hand what you need to build a cable to plug this into that when someone brings some wierdball thingus in to try and record. It also gets you accustomed to doing fine soldering chores, and that is a *priceless* skill for studio and instrument maintenance.
Regardless of the marketing hype to the contrary, there's actually very little magic in cables. There are many companies that take fairly pedestrian wire, run-of-the-mill connectors, and then package them and make completely outrageous claims about how they've had them blessed by the Pope or something and that somehow makes them "better". Ultimately, it's all about the resistance and capacitance of the cable, the shield coverage percentage, the details of the layup (in the case of star quad), and the triboelectric properties (read: handling noise).
If you are at all up for it, learn to make your own. For example, here's what I have in stock right now, just raw materials for building cables as I need them: a roll of Belden 8762 foil shielded pair for fixed back-of-the-rack interconnect, a roll of Canare L-4E6S star
quad mic cable, a roll of Gotham Audio GAC-1 low noise guitar cable, some Gepco 4-pair snake cable, and probably 10 or so each of male and female XLRs, 1/4" TS, TRS, TRS telephone-type, and RCA connectors (all Neutrik). With this wad in hand, I can walk out into the shop and whip out whatever I need in just a few minutes. And, IMNSHO, the resulting quality will compare favorably with premade cables from any vendor *regardless of price*.
Another example: I have a new collaborator who likes to bring in
a Tascam 788 for roughs and work tracks. To get that guy to talk to my patchbay, I needed two 1/4" TRS-1/4" TRS telephone-type cables for the inputs, and two RCA-1/4" TRS telephone-type cables for the monitor outs. I made up a dedicated 6-foot snake with the 4-pair and the proper connectors, so setting him up when he shows up take 30 seconds. That cable doesn't exist in any catalog I've ever seen. And having it all in a single jacket prevents the formation of rope-salad...!
By all means, learn to do this: it really is a very, very useful skill.
