Extremely budget minded system for under $500.00 ?

Pabelson
"Hmmm, anybody want to ponder the logic of hooking up a $50 DVD player with a $40 cable?"

I think your just joking? A good sounding cable makes good sense always on any component that sounds good. A poor sounding cable makes no sense on a good sounding component.
Pretty simple. The fact that a DVD/CD player only costs $50 and sounds good as a wonderful treat! Now enjoy that treat as you should with a good cable. Put a poor cable on it and spoil the treat. If you can find a $5 IC that sounds as good as the Audio Art $39 IC, then buy it! You won't however.

Bill

Grannyring -- a small point: the cable doesn't "sound". By linking components, it makes THESE "sound" one way or another.
The same cable. As you know, it can often sound one way with one system & another way with another system.

You know the drill: output stage, wire, connector, plug, wire, plug, connector, input stage. Impedance, capacitance, contact material, resistance, wire material, diametre, stray noise & fields, you name it... all these act as variables.

One of the selling points of "expensive" cables is to try to limit these effects and sound more or less similar fm one system to another...
Cheers

Good basic cables, even older ones do make a big difference. I loaned some Audioquest IC's and speaker cable to a guy that had a Kenwood rack system a few years back and the $70 worth of cables I loaned him doubled his sound quality.

He got too excited though and decided to spend $400 on cables and his system wasn't up to it so it only sounded 10% better than the $70 cable package.

2nd the Denon UD-M31 only $300 new. I'd spend the $200 on better speakers.
Radio Shack DOES sell great speaker cable in the form of magnet wire for ~$3.50. Twist a few strands together with a hand drill and strip the enamel off the ends. Hi purity, polished surface finish, virtually NO dielectric, can't get much better than this, especially for low powered Denon mini-system.

Buying a minisystem and discarding the speakers defeats the purpose of a minisystem. You can buy better electronics for less.