I've got an interesting thing for you to think about, what cable connection between components makes the most sense to put the best grade cable in including the speaker cable? If you follow the signal path from the cd player the one from there to the preamp is the weakest and most delicate, it needs to be boosted in a refined way so as to be a more robust level for the amp. If the cable loses minute detail because it isn't as good that detail will be gone from the system. Preserve that signal in the highest form possible to the preamp and you can drop to a lower grade cable from the preamp to amp and the detail that was fragile has been boosted so it passes through lesser cable without detail disappearing. I've used a trick of putting best in the first spot and medium grade in the next. It makes a huge difference from the other way where you have lost important ambient information, it doesn't have the dynamic energy.
In a budget allocation scenario the lower the budget the higher ratio I'll spend on cable, cheaper electronics fed with a better signal does better than if you dropped the cable cost back to nothing and put that money into a better component. The better component with cheap wire won't sound as good as the cheaper one that had more detail and depth.
In a budget allocation scenario the lower the budget the higher ratio I'll spend on cable, cheaper electronics fed with a better signal does better than if you dropped the cable cost back to nothing and put that money into a better component. The better component with cheap wire won't sound as good as the cheaper one that had more detail and depth.