IC8 RCA Interconnects (Pair)

Description

We will NOT be offering these as DIY kits, as they are very difficult to assemble and require special tools.
There are no plans for XLR/balanced interconnects.

Development of the IC8 started in the Spring of 2022 as a possible proof of concept to hopefully offer some high-quality interconnects that would match the looks of our larger speaker cables and sound just as good. The tricky part was figuring out how to get a small rope into such a narrow & tightly-braided cable. (Tinker toys to the rescue!) The early results were very promising, if not a little ugly. Thankfully, they were already bringing better clarity and separation within the soundstage over our old Electra Cable interconnects that we were initially testing against. The final goal of these cables has been to simply get the cables out of the way of the signal, just like our other offerings.

From there, we tested several RCA ends until we found one that was both capable of accepting 13 gauge wire, easy to work with, and of course also sounded good. We ended up settling on a set of low-mass connectors that allowed us to run the positive leg of the cable all the way through the hollow tip, giving us the most-direct connection possible, without the need for any additional mass or “bling” to get in the way of the signal. The stock sleeves were also too small to fit our fully-expanded cables, so we had to hand make new ones that were made from hand-cut & threaded copper tubing, sort of mimicking the copper sleeves used on the ends of our B24 power cables, which helps to reject RFI and EMI at the connector.

By Fall of 2022 the design was mostly finalized, offering clear improvements in clarity & focus along with better soundstage layering and separation, even over our previous reference interconnects. The IC8s quickly became our new reference interconnect, and could occasionally be seen in the background of some of the videos starting in early 2023, if you looked closely.
Small iterative changes were maid over the following year, which further improved the openness of the soundstage, as well as some tweaks to make assembly a little more simple and robust. However, we still knew the hardest part as going to be be having the cables made while still meeting our quality standards… partly due to the difficulty of feeding rope through a tiny cable and making custom-copper sleeves, but also the tight working space at the connectors, where everything needed to be done cleanly & precisely, as well as the specific steps needed to ensure a quality connection while also avoiding the risk of corrosion.

We are immensely proud of the work we have put into these cables, and even more so with how they’ve turned out. We can’t wait for you to get your hands on them to hear what we’ve done for yourself.