This review comparison was a breeze. Two different interconnects meant minimal hassle to significantly shorten listening downtime. My prior Boenicke S3 experience was a solid starting point since its key C-MARC ingredient led to matching expectations for the interconnect. Its relative potency versus the speaker cable was really my main question since everything else to follow was pleasantly familiar.
Even though I shouldn't be picky, I'll admit that my favorite cable reviews involve power cords and USB. These two types tend to do a lot for me and their behavior has become quite predictable to quickly get a proper aural fix. The sooner I end up there, the quicker I can get down to actual writing and publishing. Once in a while a product arrives which resets my expectations for a product category and the S3 had done exactly that. It showed me how potent and meaningful speaker cables could still be beyond what I knew. But for me interconnects at that level were still mostly unknown.
Over the last three years, I've only reviewed a few. None approached today's on cost, not even Siltech's anniversary model Crown Princess reviewed here. I don't remember its sound enough to include comparative comments here. This left my daily cable as the most convenient benchmark which has been on constant duty ever since late 2016. That's a long time to get familiar. I simply never got around to making any changes to my low-level analog signal cables.
It's because not once did I hear anything significantly better to pursue it, the Siltech included. That had been good but not enough so to change my views on the importance of interconnects beyond what I already owned. Personal benchmarks of course trend upward over time with more exposure and experience. It's why my own views toward expensive cables no longer are what they used to be. For interconnects, I must have unconsciously awaited something as profound as what the S3 had done for speaker cables. I wanted to be surprised, caught off guard, blown away. I wanted to know what 'better' could really mean. Today finally provided this lesson but I'd be lying if I didn't see it coming.
