IC8 RCA Interconnects (Pair)
$179.00 – $299.00
Price is per pair.
All cables are in stock and ready to ship.
We are proud to offer our newest line of RCA Interconnects!
Inspired by the early Electra Cable interconnects, and adapting several concepts featured in both our DIY speaker cables and B24 power cables to offer our best interconnects yet! Designed to simply stay out of the way of the signal.
These cables use 8 separate, multi-gauge conductors in a counter-rotating braid, made from high-purity, 99.99% oxygen-free copper in polyethylene, using low-mass RCA connectors, allowing us to run the positive conductor from tip to tip, keeping the connections as direct as possible. A cotton rope is also fed through the middle of the cable to separate the individual strands to lower cable capacitance, along with copper sleeves at the ends to further improve EMI and RFI rejection/filtering without the issues created by traditional shielding techniques. Each leg (4 strands each) is equivalent to a single 13-gauge wire.
All cables are also full cryo treated.
Later prototypes of these cables have been in constant use in our systems for about 2 years now, offering improved clarity and a more open soundstage over our previous reference interconnects.
Every pair of IC8 cables comes with a 30-day trial period.
We recommend ~200 hours of burn-in before they sound their best, just connect them to your gear let them carry a signal for 24 hours a day for about 8 days.
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 proof-of-concept in hopes to 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 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 always been to simply provide high-quality interconnects that simply out of the way of the signal.
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, 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 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 & repeatable. 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.
Additional information
| Weight | 2 lbs |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 11 × 11 × 4 in |
| Length (Meter) | 0.5m, 1.0m, 1.5m, 2.0m |
Don Stockman (verified owner) –
I recently received these interconnects from Gr-research. I have been anticipating these for months. When I heard they were finally available I jumped at the purchase. They seem to be made with the same type of woven wire that their speaker cables are made from so I was completely confident this would be a no brainer purchase.
I was correct! These interconnects are dead quiet. With blacker than back background, they get out of the way of the signal and allow your gear to show its stuff. The soundstage was larger, with increased detail and clarity to instruments which are positioned deeper in the soundstage layering. The real gem of these interconnects is the presentation. They add so much detail, clarity, and robustness to the layers of soundstage. No longer do the sounds appear just as spacial cues. But they make spacial cues and images very realistic. Portraying a presence just as believable as a great center image. They are capable of allowing a 360 degree, fully holographic soundstage with depth for miles and width far extending the boundaries of my speakers and room.
If you have a treated room, these truly are a no brainer purchase. I think once you have them in your system you will agree, their performance far out weighs their price. I prefer these to any cable I have heard to date. If you room is untreated, they’re affordable enough that you will still find value in them.