Are cables really worth their high price because of their geometry?

Kimber Kable cables is a less complex braided geometry, but much better than a simple lamp cord - the "cable" is built by machine and they are pretty easy to add connectors, so they tend to be more affordable, but they are not as good as the others cables mentioned above.

With all due respect, I disagree. It depends which Kimber Kable you look at. They have many cable lines, from very inexpensive to unaffordable (i.e. Naked series). Their "Select" tier is very, very good. It competes extremely well with other brands in your list. Also, even one series, have several models. For example, Select has typically three tiers, copper only, hybrid (silver + copper), and Silver only. Geometry is also different than other tiers down the lineup.

A cable is good or bad according to everything in you system .Impossible to even guess that , so the suckers , like me spend thousands
for what is an impedance match .
The wire on 8 feet cables costing $ 2,500 often cost a few dollars.

Connectors are more important than wire .

Building cables is just like everything else. I worry that by everything else people think I mean audio. But no. I mean everything else. Its all the same.

Take cars. Pretty much all cars have four wheels. Nice and stable. They tend to all look the same. Many decades ago, not so much. All these wonderful shapes and sizes. When they started going faster though air resistance became a bigger factor and so now they are all starting to converge on aero shapes much like airplanes.

That’s the majority of cars, the automotive equivalent of the radio or boom box, up to mid-fi. Hi-Fi is like F1. Look how many different designs there are in F1. There’s been ground effects, there’s been four front wheels! Today when you look close there’s no two alike even on the same grid, and Mercedes is able to adjust front geometry by pulling and pushing on the steering wheel.

What is going on here is exactly the same thing as is going on with cables. Its always the same. At one level of performance the technology is pretty well ironed out. At the sharp end of the stick though are all these different people with all kinds of different ideas on how to advance and expand the performance envelope.

Nobody knows what they’re doing. Oh we all like to think they do. We look at something like the SR71 and say see, they know, and for sure have even better stuff now. Forgetting all the failed designs before and since. Because pushing the performance envelope is driving into the unknown. How could anyone possibly know what they’re doing? That people can be so daft as to believe these stories boggles the mind.

Especially since its not only the absolute finest cost no object performance where this applies. It applies equally well to the budget product. With SOTA the challenge is to make something better than anything ever before. With budget the challenge is to get that SOTA sound for cheap. Either way it involves trying new approaches. Either way its experimental. Either way the proof is in the pudding.

So what do we do? Talk about geometry? How dumb can you get?!? Might as well be a bunch of us sitting around arguing about Red Bull winglets vs Ferrari whatever. Its all piffle. The proof is in the pudding. Cars must be raced. Cables must be listened to.

All else is noise.

"The rest is silence". ~ Hamlet

That’s a double-entendre, by the way. "The rest" can mean everything else. But rest can also mean relaxation. Pause. Surcease. To sleep. Perchance to dream?