Audio Art IC-3SE RCA Interconnects

I had to write a review of Audio Art IC-3SE RCA interconnects that I had purchased recently. I should start by saying that I have very basic cables in my system, $20 interconnects and $50 speaker cables. I am not a believer in high end cable voodoo. To me, it's just electrons flowing through copper. The physics tells me that a different cable of the same size should not change anything. My system consists of a Benchmark DAC1 HDR, Audio Research VSi60 amp, and Martin Logan Theos speakers. Because of my skepticism, I was hesitant to purchase these cables. But, I had read good reviews that they were the best bang for the audiophile buck. So, I called Audio Art and the president himself, Rob Fritz, answered all my questions and listened to my skepticism. He explained how he is able to achieve a high level of performance at such a low price point due to low overhead. I was intrigued but still hesitant. He convinced me to give them a no hassle try, and I figured what do I have to lose? I had previously tried out Audioquest Columbia DBS interconnects and I didn't notice much improvement. So, I returned them and felt that I was the wiser and everyone else was the dumber; I had proven to myself that cables didn't make a difference. So, when I got the Audio Art IC-3SE's, I fully expected to send them back in a day or two. I warmed up the system for 30 minutes and played about ten songs with the cheap interconnects. These were remastered 96KHz/24bit songs that sounded awesome as is. I figured this would be a difficult hurdle for the Audio Art cables to overcome. When I switched to the Audio Art, holy smokes! It was as audible as switching out an amplifier. The lows opened up and the highs cleaned up. The highs had been a tad muddy before. This improvement was with the interconnects only and I still have the $50 speaker cables. So, my next focus will be speaker cables, and I'm hoping I don't notice any difference there because they can get expensive.