I've never realized that cables can go for so much. I find myself on the verge of spending upwards of 200 bucks on some speaker wire and a couple HDMI cables...Can any of you audiophiles help me out in this regard? How important are cables? Can you recommend some great bang-for-your-buck offers? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Monoprice.com

Here are their HDMI cables. The lower the AWG number, the thicker the cable. For runs up to 10 feet, the 28 AWG would probably be fine. For anything longer, I'd look at the 24 AWG.

As far as speaker wire goes, as long as it's the appropriate gauge, you're good to go. If you want to be sure, use 14 or 12 gauge. You can get it pretty cheap at Home Depot or eBay. Don't go for the nutty stuff--if you're anything like me in college, you kinda need to hold onto some money. Kimber is not your friend. And you won't notice a difference.

I would highly recommend Blue Jeans Cable Speaker Cable

Get the Belden 5000UE (Gray jacket, 12 AWG) or BJC Twelve White (5000UE) (White jacket, 12 AWG). 40 cents a foot. The wire is very nice because it is 2 10 guage wires within another wire coating so they stay together.

I attest to monoprice for everything else. You will save a TON of money with them.

I'm in college too...if you want you can check out my thread here to see my dorm room set up.

Good luck with your system!

I second the Blue Jeans recommendation. They're terrific. No frills, just good quality cable, at reasonable prices.

I was very impressed with them. They are not normal speaker cable.

The way they are made they are slick looking.

You can even apply audio fairy dust and they will sound like $600 speaker cables!

Thank you all for the advice. How important is the quality of other cables such as HDMI and optical cables? I see wide ranging prices for those cables.

Cables command an enormous markup, even when you're not dealing with snake oil--which the cable industry is pretty much drowning in. This is important to bear in mind. Any cable maker who is not commanding at least a 100% markup is just cheating itself.

Drew, cables are important in that their total absence has a drastic effect on sound quality, but once competently made cables(available at very low prices)are used, there's nothing else that can be accomplished. Considering shipping charges, probably the most cost-effective source for speaker wire is to pick it up locally at Home Depot, Lowe's etc. Connecting cables are available at reasonable cost from sources such as MonoPrice, already linked, or Total Signal .