I have my Ars Sonum Filarmonia sitting on a SolidSteel rack behind the plane of the Merlin speakers. While your aesthetic preferences dictate having long IC's and short speaker cables, almost everything that I have read seems to indicate that the opposite scheme would not only be more cost effective (given equal quality speaker and IC cables), but would also provide better sound. Do a search and see what you come up with. In the mean time, I hope you are deriving as much musical enjoyment from your Ars as I am from mine.