What type of cables make the most difference

@zavato if you’re ok with completely unreliable answers, and were just looking to chat, cool…you got the answers. Good luck making heads or tails of what’s been posted as experience. Lol

I have followed this thread with great interest.  I thought I would chime in as this is an exceedingly timely question for me. 

I would note, Up until about two weeks ago I had my speakers and components on different walls requiring 60 feet of speaker cable.  A couple of the (non-obnoxious) cable threads made me reconsider my physical set up.  Now everything is on one wall and my speaker cable is not 2 meters.  Same mediocre brand but basically 54ish feet shorter.  I think there was a decent change in the quality of the music coming from my speakers.  I think that helped.

At the same time, prior to this change I engaged with an online retailer with a very large cable library (again, I apologize not sure if we can or cannot name and I have no interest in running a foul of the rules.  

I have received three digital cables to try between my DAC and streamer.  We started here because speaker cables at 60 feet would have been ridiculous.  However, I now wonder - should I pause on the three digital cables and pivot to the speaker cables - again, directly to your point - what is my biggest bang for my buck?

I don't know.  I do know, I am not prepared to go down the power cable path just yet.  I want to complete my interconnects and speaker cables before I go there.  And even before that - I want to have a dedicated plug and line run for my outlet.  

What I might offer - someone had suggested a change from Ethernet to fiber when plugging into my streamer.  The three components were:  10Gtek Fiber Patch Cable, 10Gtek 1.25G SFP Transceiver 1000Base-LX, and TP-Link MC220L.  All in for those three items was less than $80.  I felt a significant difference in the sound quality of my streaming.  

I look forward to the comments from others.  A number of people who have already commented have been very influential in helping me think through this cable/audio journey and I am appreciative.  

@zavato 

So back in the day, tape decks, tuners and CD players all came with cheesy interconnects.  The day I replaced them with heavier well made IC’s first between my sources, it made a HUGE difference. Then I replaced them between the preamp and amps and my Halfler D220’s just sounded fantastic.  Since then I’ve replaced everything a couple times and while everything has made a difference, nothing has made the extreme change to my system. Changing the power cables made the next biggest difference mostly when using heavier gauge cables on the power amplifiers. 
 

All the best.

@curiousjim - I like when you said “back in the day”. I completely understand- I bought my first stereo in the mid 70’s