First System Advice on Cables

Wow! I really appreciate all the helpful responses. Now I will compare price, quality and resulting sound each of the possibilities offer. I never realized different cables would produce different sound qualities. Again, many thanks to all.

Benn listening to the M-20s for a few weeks now. They are exceptional monitors. I'm using inexpensive DH labs cables, shotgun Silver Sonic T-14 speaker cable and the very inexpensive Silver Sonic BL IIs. Nice cable for the $.

I highly recommend you check out bluejeanscable.com XLR interconnects. They use very good connectors(Neutric) and pretty good quality wire. They compared very nicely to a much more expensive Audience AU24 XLR interconnects in my system.
I am actually using a relatively long run(11ft) of bluejeans RCAs now from phono stage to my preamp with very good results and it blends fine with my other much more expensive cables. As far as speaker cables, I would recommend, if you go with XLR interconnects, to invest most in a good speaker cable.
Some sp. cables to consider are lower end Synergistic Research, Purist Audio(Meauseus), even Monster M2.4. Also, the word is Anti-Cables are good, but I never tried, so no opinion on that brand.
As far as power cords, put the best one on the source component and if this has to be the only power cord you can buy now, buy the best one you can afford.

If you listen to rock, blues, or jazz, I can also recommend Blue Jeans cables for your first system. What they currently list on their website as their favorite balanced and single-ended ICs are good sonically, well made, and affordably priced cables. I am not going to say that they are as good as anything I have used, but that they are good enough to get the jest of and sort out most systems and enjoy music playback, so they make sense for a first system.

After that, it can get a little messy and confusing with various cables having various colorations, especially if you are [know it or not] trying to compensate for component or room colorations. Build a good foundation (system and room) that pleases you when listening to music, then drive yourself crazy with cables.

No offense intended but it matters little as to which cables you use at this point.

Find something used on Audiogon; there are many inexpensive brands from which to choose.

After that concentrate on the components, ac power, and your room.

Go back to cables later.

IMO