I would certainly use 12 gauge all the way around as a minimum if going with budget cable/wire. For the money, BlueJeans and Monoprice would be my first recommendations. I am confident Marco would be well served with either based on his system.

Ironically, I'm going to my local dealer today to compare my cables against their cable offerings. Long story short, cables do make a difference. I think fine tuning the cables in your system is like tuning a car. You can get that last little bit of performance out of your car with better airflow into and out of the engine. Same principle for me. Your not going to turn a Volkswagen bug into a Porsche 911 no matter how many modifications you apply. There is a lot of snake oil solutions out there that may promise otherwise and you can spend silly amounts of money!

I'd recommend testing any significant investment thoroughly before investing the money. You can get some really good cables for very reasonable amounts of money. Blue Jeans cables are good and I currently use one of their RCA cables for my turntable. The build quality and sound are excellent. I have also found Pangea power cables to make a decent improvement for a modest investment. They are certainly better than stock cables.

Today, I will be testing my speaker cables against a few high end brands. My current speaker wires for my 2-channel setup are Belden 5T00UP 10 gauge wire as sold on Blue Jeans cables website and some home made cables made with 18/7 Cerrowire from my local big box home improvement store. Surprisingly, the 18-7 wire is significantly better to my ears in my setup. The biggest difference is in the top end and the ability to separate each sound in a recording. The Belden wire is good and has great bass but the sound is a bit muddied and dull in comparison to the cheaper wire. Both are approximately 10-gauge but the sound is different.

Anyways, these are simply my opinions. Each of us is entitled to our own. Every setup is different and what I hear and prefer may not be the same for others. Carefully investing modest amounts of money into your cabling can make a difference. I think the rule of thumb of spending 10 to 20% on your cables is a good starting point and I wouldn't spend a penny without a personal audition, unless there was a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Cheers,

T Cobe