@1graber2 what you are talking about makes sense for analog signal.
From DAC out all the way to the speakers - yes your cables MUST be as good as you can get (or as good as you want to spend money for)
However your digital signal, especially from file source (NAS or streaming server) is a different story. Media player cashes the digital information as it comes from the source over the network cable and has enough bytes to play "smoothly". Network protocol takes care of packages transfer, ordering, re-sending lost packages (if any) and so on. Digital data is sent in discrete packages - that is defined by TCP/IP protocol. No cable can change that, Media player converts bursts of data into contentious stream of digital data over the optical cable (for example) to DAC.
From DAC out all the way to the speakers - yes your cables MUST be as good as you can get (or as good as you want to spend money for)
However your digital signal, especially from file source (NAS or streaming server) is a different story. Media player cashes the digital information as it comes from the source over the network cable and has enough bytes to play "smoothly". Network protocol takes care of packages transfer, ordering, re-sending lost packages (if any) and so on. Digital data is sent in discrete packages - that is defined by TCP/IP protocol. No cable can change that, Media player converts bursts of data into contentious stream of digital data over the optical cable (for example) to DAC.