Hi danager! If you bought your gear at WalMart, cables probably won't help. If your gear is from well known, quality companies, it's worth an experiment. Are you using ordinary lamp cord for speaker wire? Lots of us do. It should be 14 gauge or larger (smaller number). Get some used cables on line (you can return them if they don't improve things), good ones with a good reputation. Do they help? Are they worse? Your system is different than everyone else's. What works well for Mr. X may not work for you and vica versa. USB cables are critical. Not many people seem to talk about that, but it's true. Amazon has nice Chinese power cords for $50. Worth a try? I use 'em. My pals do too. Are there better ones? Sure, but if you get a noticable improvement for $50, be happy! It like a marriage partner. They only way to know - is to marry them. An expensive, risky proposition. Cables are the same but much cheaper. Happy Listening!
How good does my system have to be to realize an improvement with cables?
I've heard the difference power cables and interconnect cables in a highly resolving system so that's not the question. $200 for cables on a $500 DAC doesn't make sense to me. Wouldn't that $200 be better spent on a better component? At what point is an expensive cable the best choice? Spending $500 on a $15,000 DAC does make sense as the transparency and resolution of the component could be better realized with a better signal / power source.
My question is what's the percentage of the overall component's cost should be the cabling and at what point should it even be considered?
Or put a different way How would you know if your cables are your weakest link?