Percentage of cable cost

Best to start out with cables purchased from monoprice dot com. That way you can forget about percentages. Monoprice cables will sound wise beat anything you pay mega bucks for. Try them, you can ship them back if not satisfied. Don't fall into the trap of more expensive is better.

Buconero, I too was naysayer, an open minded skeptic if you will regarding expensive cables...until I tried them. Actually it pisses me off that they DO make a difference...even power cords! I really, really... wanted to draw the line, cut some corners somewhere...but if you have decent separates, they can and will benefit from better cables. As for the % in question, list price of course, if I had paid list, 19%. If I had not got short speaker cables for monoblocks and kept my gear low and in the center it could of easily gone up another 5% of total MSRP. I don't think there is a formula that works for all but it seems like anyone with an optimized system ends up being at 15% on the low side and 25% or more on the high side. Tmsorosk...Don't feel bad I would easily be close to your % had I not used as short as possible runs wherever possible and I'm toying with "interviewing" some $$$ power cords.

TEN PERCENT is a good amount of money to spend on cabling.
More than that and you should have just spent the money on better electronics IMO.
Naturally some 'cable crazy' folks think nothing of spending way more on cables. That is their free choice.

But if you want advice, ten percent of system cost is a great way to avoid foolish cable excess.
My entire system audio and video, for interconnects, power cords, and speaker cables, is pretty exactly 10% of total system cost.

My powerline conditioners add another five percent to the equation.

So "IF YOU NEED TO ASK" then ten percent is a great choice.
For folks with a lot of experience knowing what they want and expect from electronics and wires, they can and do, do anything they want, andthose folks may have very different percentages. But, as I mentioned, for a beginner, ten percent is an excellent decision.

I've been studying this for over two decades now, and I've found that the sweet spot for percentage cable cost in relation to system cost comes in between 16.7432% and 18.6559%.
For the sake of everyone's safety, I implore you, DO NOT stray outside of those boundries!!

I've had Kimber 4TC 8TC, Morrow SP3 SP4, now have Nordost Blue Heaven. Like them all, but their no better than Best Buy or Radio Shack. The sound is the SAME! Get over it. If you want to spend money for nothing, go ahead.