Boenicke's S3 speaker cables and today's IC3 CG share the same next-gen C-MARC geometry and material density of 3.5mm² conductive area via a 99.99% pure cryo'd copper sleeve spun around a tightly packed mercerized cotton core. Each individual lacquer-insulated 0.125mm copper hair spiraling clockwise mates with its oppositely polarized/twisted counterpart across the same number of turns per distance unit. Two opposing magnetic fields induced at the exact same location cancel each other out perfectly. This results in immunity to interference and operational silence without any shielding. This braiding geometry known as humbucker sits at the core of C-MARC. Boenicke's IC3 CG incorporates 24 bundles of 12 conductive strands each, so 288 hair-thin Litz wires in total. Two Litz strands spiral left and right. This applies the same 50:50 ratio to the resulting final assembly for the second-scale fractal effect.

One glimpse at the IC3 CG notices that it's no ordinary interconnect. Nearly all such products consist of one run per channel. Boenicke's adds an extra leg to separate its signal ground. Upon identifying signal ground as a source of various problems, Sven moved it as far from the key veins as possible. This ground leg too dresses in mercerized cotton but is far thinner and slinkier and instead of in a regular RCA terminates in a split copper ring. The application of these slightly springy ends seems tricky at first but there's no mystery. They're meant to be gently pushed onto the component's RCA barrel before the cable's own RCA plug follows. In practice this worked as intended with all my components but one.

Each of Sven Boenicke's loudspeakers is available in three trim levels. As one moves beyond the base models, numerous costly upgrades from Steinmusic, Bybee, Harmonix, Duelund and Sven's own resonators hide inside. I already had a good taste of these additions. After all, my freshly acquired W11 SE+ doesn't sound like its SE version reviewed here but that's still a story for another day. The key thing to note is that Boenicke's cables don't follow the same established SE/SE+ routine of his speakers. They're subject to something else. His interconnects start with the entry-level IC1, then there's the IC2, above it sits the IC3 and finally comes the substantially pricier IC3 CG of today.

The CG suffix stands for 'Competitor's Gear' to imply on-board tuning devices similar to what's in his speakers. The goal is to benefit from them when one uses hardware other than Boenicke's own. For example, the forthcoming S3 CG speaker cable wouldn't introduce any advantages over the regular S3 on my W11 SE+ floorstanders which already contain their own 'CG' parts. However, my DAC and amps don't have them so today's review cable meant no double trouble. To take an educated guess, Sven's own electronics will likely sport CG tweaks to render the CG cables overkill. But to see how that plays out, the man first has to release his pending electronics.