Never really calculated it. Joe Kubala came to my house back in 2006-7 and I was impressed with the difference his cables made- I had a mishmash of Shunyata, Van den Hul, Cardas, and probably some I’m forgetting. I use his Emotion interconnect, speaker loom (custom for my Avantgarde Duos) and power cables and a 1.5 meter piece of Elation between my phono stage and line stage. I’m sure at retail, it looks like big money, but when I bought it, it did not cause pain, and that’s almost 20 years ago- except for the Elation, which is somewhat newer. He reterminated a long interconnect that had a bad XLR connection, and shipped it back to me pronto. Good guy, good product, I never worried about finding something "better." For what little it may be worth, I never followed some percentage formula for various facets of a system. To me, getting the components right, and getting them set up in the room properly, is far more important than the wire. That's a finishing touch, yes, it makes a difference, but I would not, if on a budget, worry that- I'd rather see a synergistic combination of components placed artfully in the room to extract the most. I'm largely vinyl on media, with a pretty extensive collection of genres, from obscure jazz, to obscure rock, to all the mainstays in classic rock and classical, some blues and soul. I can keep myself amused.
