Which cable is most important to spend money on...

You can do EXTREMELY well with inexpensive speaker wire and power cords, but not with interconnects. The important issue is to have power delivery/noise control and room acoustics worked properly prior to auditioning anything. Regarding the *order* in which cables should be upgraded I agree 100% with Thomas Heisig.

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In my past experiences and in my own system, I have to agree with Samzx12.

1. Source to Preamp interconnects
2. Power Cables (on Source/Conditioner, Amp, and then Preamp)
3. Preamp to Power Amp interconnects
4. Speaker cables

Thanks !

As for system ancillary, most definitely a good AC power cord. A well designed AC power cord will let a given piece of gear operate most efficiently as to what the power supply needs or what you want the power supply to do. This is important because when all is said and done, the music you hear out of your loudspeakers is basically the power supplies of your gear being modulated.

As with any piece of gear or cabling, there is one of two approaches you can take with AC power cords:

1.) An AC cord that pleasantly (to your ears and biases) editorializes the basic sonic signature of the piece of gear it's partnered to. From there you can further "tune" with the partnering I/Cs or S/Cs to dial in the "flavor" you're looking for. The power cord serves as the foundation to what you're trying to accomplish.

2.) An AC cord that is fundamentally neutral that offers the least amount of editorial to the gear the cord is partnered to. This approach allows one to more fully appreciate the sonic virtues designed into the gear or, if you will, the electronic designer's intent. Again, the power cord serves as the foundation and further, the I/C and/or S/Cs you choose will finalize what you're trying to accomplish...in this case we'll assume one is not looking to editorialize certain virtues of the gear and thus changing it's signature but rather exploit all the virtues equally.

As the hierarchy continues down the latter, our experience has lead to then address source I/Cs, then pre-amp I/Cs and finally S/Cs. I suppose this isn't "etched in stone" but, based on our "system approach", this has saved the most time and resources to finally get to the music and yielded the most rewarding results.

Hope this helps.

Cheers!

Robert
RSAD

I think of it like a tree with trunk, branches, and leaves. All the energy passes thru the trunk, the power cord, as Robert points out. Next most energy is thru the amp/speaker interface, and next most the preamp/amp connection, and last (the "leaves") between source/pre-amp.

The speaker cables are sort an equivalent "branch" in the hierarchy, to the amp/preamp connection (granted they carry more energy.) So one could theoretically make a case for upgrading the speaker cables right after the PCs. However, I'd argue that even decent gauge but inexpensive zipcord would allow accurate comparisons of cabling on the "input" side of the amp, and because they're not part of that "chain" of components/interconnects, that leaving them for last, after improving everything else, would allow for better hearing comparisons of different speaker cables. Just a thought ;--)
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Agree completely with Robert from Ridge Street Audio, and Nsgarch. My ears tell me that there are quite a few reasonably priced interconnects and speaker cables that get passed over because they don't offset the effects of colored power cords and AC products. Also, I don't think you can ever recover dynamics that are lost due to less than optimum AC products.