Which Cables Are of Most Importance?

Agree with ( Frogman ). It used to be called the Humpty Dumpty affect, once the pieces are broken nothing can but it back together again, not even all the kings horses and all the kings men.

Frogman is right. What is lost, is lost. The point is that when you upgrade IC's you gain less then when you upgrade speaker cable or power cords. This can be clearly heard.
Differences among IC's are just smaller then in case of other cables.

While Frogman's statement is certainly true, the converse is also true. Any information that is lost or distortion that is added by a downstream component or cable cannot be corrected by anything further upstream!

IMO the lack of consensus in this thread confirms what Philjolet said early on: "There are too many variables in personal stereos to have a fair consensus for comparison."

Many technical factors could be cited in support of that position, including the dependency of many cable effects on the input and output impedances of the components that are being connected, balanced vs. unbalanced interconnections, ground loop susceptibility of the components, the rfi/emi environment, use of feedback in the components, power supply design, AC power characteristics, the lengths of the cables, etc., etc.

Regards,
-- Al

The system is as good a it's weakest link. Spend lots of dough on components and use crappy wires ...
I under estimated PC's at the beginning and was not happy with the sound, was replacing other component but the real problem was still there , the PC. Lamp cord , or computer cord can ruin the whole picture.
I've played with shelves under CD player lately. My equipment sits on Finite Elemente audio rack, on Finite Elemente Ceraballs and Cerapucks (one of the best if not the best stuff when it comes to vibration control). I put additional shelf between the player and the rack. Actually I experimented with a couple of shelves made of playwood, wood, MDF, glass..... Again, changes in sound were significant from almost unbearable to much better sound. The best was glass shelf!! (8 mm thick) in my particular system. And the difference is bigger then changing interconnects!, even replacement of stock tube with a very good NOS tube in the amp didn't bring bigger change. A single glass shelf!

Not surprisingly, many responded with the power cords as the most important one. Very possible because most of the homes are far from the ITU-T compliance, one the main culprit having no or a very bad grounding.

In terms of best return on investment, I would suggest having, whenever possible, a dedicated 20A line and have the grounding checked. Then spend the money downstream, starting with the ICs (staying within your comfort zone of your budget, upgrading slowing till you don’t hear the improvement). In my particular case, after installing a dedicated line and improving the grounding, the difference between having a good power conditioner like the PS Audio PPP and without one is so minimal that I got rid of it; the overall performance on the system (using the same IC/SC) is very noticeable with the new AC line/improved grounding.

As for how much the allocation of the total budget should be I rely on the experience on fellow Goners. The systems section is very useful to checkout those with similar gear (say the same amp and/or the same speakers that you own) what type of IC/SC/etc they use in order to have a magnitude of the (extra) spending.