If I can afford one good cable, which component?

The signal coming from the phono stage is the most delicate. If your arm doesn't have a dedicated wire...ie: cart pins to phono stage in, I would pay most attention to that cable first.

Try cable in all locations and stay with the one that sounds the best. Make sure to post up and let us know where your cable ended up and which locations you tried.Good luck.

The single most cost effective improvement I've ever made was the addition of a good power conditioner. But Elizabeth is right about there being so many variables and we don't even know what your budget is. I concur with the Venom 3 recommendation because I think it's the best $90 power cable you can buy.

One bit of advice if you experiment with PC's: Try to get loaners that are burnt in for you. (100 hours or more) Then, let the cables run for a day on a component before you switch....quick switching is misleading and can lead to severe audio nervosa. ;-)

 
A new feature at The AudioBeat speaks to this and other cabling issues:"Front-end first".
 

Jtimothya,

Thanks for posting this article! Very well put together and highly accurate.