priorities-better cables or power conditioning?

It all depends on which conditioner and power cables you choose...and how bad your AC is to begin with..and how many components are part of the system.

It's a complicated equation.
1. The last 12 feet of AC to the component is the most important.
2. The more equipment you have, the more you need a conditioner that isolates each component from each other.
3. A dedicated line is always a big improvment.

_Paul

Bob
I do have a HT 2channel combination, as is your case audio is far more important to me than HT.
I had at one time everything in the HTS including the cable signal and stayed that way for quite a long time.
And then went to dedicated lines, improvement. then amp straight to wall improvement, took out all video out of HTS same result improvement. Then plugged ev direct to wall except video that was put in a separate circuit the best so far. Next ev video will be on HTS.

Just sharing my findings, my AC is not that bad but adding the HTS was an improvement vs no treatment nor dedicated lines.
Just for kicks do you have the HTS directly on the floor or rack? If you want to try an easy tweak put it over cones or any vibration tweak you might have.
I did this trick to a friend's system while listening to a CD: paused the disk, put the cones under (hard floor no carpet) and his jaw dropped.
Luis

Thanks to everyone for all the ideas-sounds like all agree that more/beefier dedicated lines allowing more separation of components would be a good 1st step. If I"m not happy totally with that I will most likely save up for a good balanced design conditioner (probably a BPT product). In the meantime I will try moving components on and off the conditioner I have (thanks Luis for those ideas) and getting the HTS off the floor on some cones. I've been reading a lot about the Signal cable products and may also experiment with some new Power cords/interconnects as well after I run another dedicated line. Thanks again to everyone!

Dedicated lines and switch to balanced power (+60V, -60V, ground referenced to 0). Enjoy that for a while. Then get fancy power cords, cable elevators, zap the cables with a mapleshade ionoclast, then paint the contact ends with Walker SST.