I have found ribbon cables to be a game changer--easily the equivalent of upgrading my speakers, and I already had very decent cables.
Ribbons are the wire equivalent of springs. They can be done at different levels but the basic technology is so good even inexpensive versions tend to outperform a lot of more expensive stuff that is trying to do it another way. Tekton MTM is another example. As is DBA. In all of these it is a fundamental re-thinking of what everyone else has been doing for so long that yields unusually large performance gains without having to spend a tremendous amount of money.