entry level cables and Audioholics

This is just one man's opinion, but I don't really recommend getting heavy into cable until the system gets to the point where it warrants spending some actual money beyond Radio Shack (or the like - AR, Monster, etc.) cabling.

You have a nice CD player, and decent speakers. I'd look into upgrading your amplification, then loudspeakers, before thinking about wire.

Don't trust an addict. That advice may have you ignoring this and other posts though, so you figure it out! Trelja gives you some good advice. Your investment, at this point, would be better spent elsewhere for more significant rewards. Also, though all the factors you list may indeed have an impact on the sonic quality of a speaker cable, more than any active piece of hardware you spend your money on, the price you pay for cable does not necessarily have a direct corrolation to the sonic rewards you get for your dollars. There are great cables to be had for a relatively small investment, and you can spend big $ on cables that may leave you shrugging your shoulders and wishing you hadn't trusted that post you read on A'gon by user 'BigAudioBonehead' that told you of "Jaw-Dropping transformations that will cause you to stay up all night long listening to your entire music collection...blah-ba-de-blah, blah, blah!"

Marco

In Audioholics Speaker Cable Faceoff 2, the Cardas Crosslink speaker cable measured Rs 4.3 mohms, Cp 30 pf, Ls .117 uH.
In Audioholics Speaker Cable Faceoff 1, the Soundking 12 awg speaker cable measured Rs 3.18 mohms, Cp 13.7 pf, Ls .203 uH.
The Belden 8214 spec sheet says 1.2 mohms. 26 pf, .065 uH if I am reading it correctly.

I did order a 14awg x 3 power cable by Volex 17604 to upgrade from stock 18awg cords.

I should have done as much research on cables as I have on my other components. The Radio Shack stuff even seemed expensive to me at the time. My wife would say, these cables aren't broken, you turn on the radio and music comes out, what more do you want? I saw one comment that someone was disappointed with a cd player mod because he expected the skies to open up and golden notes to come from his speakers. Is that too much to ask?

It seems for $30-60 per cable I can get respectable quality. It seems Blue Jeans, Signal Cable and Element are reasonable vendors. Take Five Audio, Ram Electronics, Parts Connexion, and Percy Audio carry good parts too. I'm trying to minimize decision paralysis. Any one of these will probably be good enough. My next upgrade will be a Denon 2910 dvd. A new amp will need to wait.
Thanks for your time.

Trelja and Jax2 have good advice. Invest your money in the other parts of your system. Amplification is a good place to start for what you have.

I recently was able to achieve a dramatic improvement in my receiver-based system, not with speaker cables, but with the IC from DVD player to receiver. (I am using the receiver as pre-pro, and listening to CDs using the multi-channel input on the receiver) The IC involved was a set of Canare wire ones I got thrown in on the deal when I bought my DVD player.

Not being satisfied with my audio on CDs(lack of focus and coherence to music), I was looking through one of my boxes of stuff, and saw an old set of Tara Labs RSC ICs I had gotten years ago.

So, on a hunch, I connected the Tara between the DVD player L/R multi-channel outputs and the receiver multi-channel inputs.

Whoa! It was an amazing difference in the clarity, and coherence of the music. Much more enjoyable to listen to.

I am now looking to upgrade my 5 ICs from the receiver to the power amp.