How good does my system have to be to realize an improvement with cables?

I have found speaker cables make the largest difference and went with Nordhost Heimdall 2.  Upgrading power cords or USB cables yielded no improvement to my ears.  YMMV

Thank you for the response.  What a wonderfully frustrating hobby, right?  My issue would be if I didn't hear a difference did I just try the wrong cable or can my components just overcome the deficiencies in my chosen cables or is something else holding me back from realizing the improvements?

My only conclusion is there is not a right answer to any stereo question.  Like trying to get your arms around water.

exactly...different gear, different room, different music, room correction, different sonic preferences... all lead to different cable choice...you just gotta start trying some

Yeah, “it depends”.

"If you bought your gear at WalMart” - you can get good-n-bad gears everywhere these days.

nice and therefore expensive cables are just “nice”, not necessarily improving anything technically. I upgraded cables to make my whole system to be elegant and to manage cables to lower noise coupling, optimize loading, impedance etc.

What about the basic elements / fundamentals of music? One surely hopes for agreement / convergence.

Embrace this ⬆

Not that ⬇

My question is what's the  percentage of the overall component's cost should be the cabling and at what point should it even be considered?

Or put a different way How would you know if your cables are your weakest link?