Yes! You don't necessarily need the same level of cable vs mains but it's critical to use cables that don't add too much warmth. Warmth in the bass region comes across as fullness, it's like adding harmonics or even order harmonic distortion. This can be a subjective preference in some cases, but the downsides are poor timbre differentiation, or bass instruments sounding too similar as the added warmth is the same across all instruments and recordings, so you get a certain "character" added to everything just like warm mains cables. The warmth also rounds off transients and dynamics and adds to overhang, or artificially extended decay. This has the subjective effect of making the bass sound slow and out of time with the main speakers. We can get acclimated to warm bass or harmonic distortion in bass, and then dislike it when experiencing cleaner bass. But after a short time most people prefer cleaner bass.
Cleaner bass leads to the impression of improvement across the frequency range too, which makes sense as you're getting rid of distortion and added artifacts (warmth), which results in being able to hear the rest of the music more clearly. In my own speakers I ended up using a 15" woofer with an 18" woofer's motor and a very stiff cone. Made by Acoustic Elegance, it's distortion measures nearly an order of magnitude lower than my other speakers that use dual 7" TAD carbon fiber woofers. If you add in a very powerful and precise amp, and cables that aren't overly warm, the result is bass that plays a massive role in elevating the overall listening experience. My woofers (in both speakers) play up to 400 Hz, so not exactly subs, but even with subs it makes a similar improvement.
As far as cable quality, unfortunately lower cost cables means a warmer cable a vast majority of the time, so it's really easy to end up with fast, dynamic and resolving mains and then relatively slow, bloated bass from the subwoofer, and a lot of this is simply the cables, both signal and power cables, both can add significant warmth. This is common because most people don't want to spend big-$ on subwoofer cables.
My solution for this is ZenWave Clear Bass cables. They are made with military surplus silver-plated copper wire with teflon insulation, I buy this wire for about 10% of the cost of brand new wire and pass the savings onto my customers. Silver plated wire has the rep of sounding harsh, splashy, and anything but high end... I get that, but those unfortunate issues are nowhere near the bass region, they are upper mid to high frequency issues. Also, those issues are the result of unbalanced reactance, most often excessive capacitance, in the the design of the cable. I have tested cables made from the exact same wire, one cable is full of those flaws and with the other, the flaws are almost imperceptible. The way I make silver plated copper cables results in the latter, and it's so good I started a whole 'nother cable company in order to offer the sound of a good silver cable at much lower prices, which is called VolkSilver. The Clear Bass line also offers lower priced ICs and REL cables made using the mil spec wire. We're talking PCs starting at $299 using Furutech rhodium plated plugs and XLRs/REL cables starting at $199 each! These affordable cables will match or exceed the results of using high-$ cables as the Clear Bass cables are specifically made for subs, and hence use much heavier gauge construction than general purpose cables, 9 gauge PCs and 15 gauge interconnects, as well as using a low-inductance design which is especially good for bass quality.
I run AQ Dragon's to everything and everything is fed of AQ Niagra power conditioners
