Walt wrote:

The female connector has the connector holes surrounded by a hard light
blue material (not sure what it is). Since it's rigid, the holes have
no 'springiness' unlike the genuine Cannon connector which have rubber
as the surround material.

This sounds like near-precision alignment to me. g The holes in the
insert are slightly larger in diameter than the pins on the male plug
and serve to guide the pins into the socket. If the pins are badly bend
on the male end, the holes in the insert keep you from inserting the
bad connector and ruining another connector. I suppose that some "show
must go on - I don't have time to get another cable" brutes will try to
force it anyway.

Eventually the holes can become loose making
for flaky connections, but this is after a couple decades of use.

All connectors have a finite number of insertions. I don't see this
number being significantly different among the various manufacturers,
though I haven't looked for an actual number. That's Arny's assignment,
if he chooses to accept it.

If you're a busy guy like George with a lot of rental gear going out to
the same kind of people who abuse rental cars because they're not their
own, I can see that the life of any cable in months is going to be
shorter than that for someone like me. The only XLR style problems that
I've ever had has been with the female chassis mounted connectors (D3F)
when the latch tab (the thing that says "PUSH" on it) gets bent into a
position where you can't push it and the plug won't go in. This usually
occurs on a stage box that's been dragged across the stage connector
side down.

But "modern" connectors have solved that problem - look, ma, no latch!