Higher end value cables

How much can you afford ? Do you need RCAs or XLRs ? How long ? And what is your equipment ?
Cables are really difficult to recommend. Besides, do you want 'tone controls' cables or more neutral cables ?

Audio Art Classic interconnects. I think, they are $100-$120 new for 1 meter pair. I tried them out of curiosity, excellent for the price, not harsh or bright, reasonably good balance and tone, good bass. If you get them just make sure to point arrows on the jacket in the right direction, they are very small and hard to see. Audio Art has 30 days return policy, as I remember. The cables require 170 hours of burning in time, they don't sound terrible brand new, by the way. I don't use mine, keep them just in case.

Just remember that the sound will be as good as your weakest cable. I suggest going higher with at least your main source interconnects. Also, with better power cords interconnects suddenly start sounding better. Power cords on preamp and dac are often though not always most important. I think, $300-$500 new is where performance starts.

Experimenting is always a good thing, but yes, to begin with I would put the best interconnects on the phono stage or dac. Sometimes, though it’s not clear which one is best, that’s it might be component dependent. Best for phono stage might not be best for dac, best power cord for dac might not be best for power amp.
I have a simpler system and it is easy to figure it out. Speaking of phono stages, you somehow would want to match the cable that goes from phono to preamp to your tonearm cable. I now have two very high level about equal performance different brands interconnects in the system, and one works slightly better with phono stage than another, and I believe it is because it matches better with tonearm cable.