Which Cable Makes the Biggest Impact?

Sherod,
Excellent points all. Placing greater importiance on one cable while discounting the importance of a different cable "in the signal path," is much like placing greater importance on a specific link in a chain at the expense of another when all bear the same load.

LM

Power Cords.
1. DAC and Transport
2. Pre Amp
3. Power Amp

For interconnects.
1. Source to pre
2. Pre to power

In my opinion speaker wires are every bit as important as interconnects so if you need to make a significant change with just one pair of interconnect or one pair of speaker wire I'd go for the speaker wires first since this represents a complete change in one section of the signal path, assuming all other factors are equal. Conversely I see changing just one pair of interconnects in a standard two pair interconnect system (source to pre, and pre to power) as effecting a change to only half of the interconnect chain. As to which cable is of utmost importance, I think it really depends more on the state of your systems current cables with an eye for it’s weakest link, not an absolute standard. At the end of the day every cable in the chain is equally important and no cable can be ignored when synergy is your goal.

Hope this helps,
LM