I recently bought a set of empress ics and spkr cables and have been delighted with the results. I gave them a week of burn-in time on the audio dharma cable cooker before listening. Initially they seemed competent but uninspiring; then i discovered that one of the speaker cables was on back to front. I turned it around and the system really came alive! That was a week ago, during which time they've settled in in-situ and are revealing greater depths of prowess. My overall impression is that they're well balanced and confer a greater enjoyment of our hobby. They offer the incisiveness of silver without the harshness and fatigue that sometimes accompanies it. That may imply to some that there is a dullness to the sound but that simply isn't the case. I've played mostly jazz through them over the past few days and there's a great palpability and insight into the ambience of the recording. They offer a natural presentation and a pretty broad frequency range. I've yet to do some AB comparisons against my previous cables (valhalla ic and xindak fs2 spkr cable) however given the enjoyment I'm having with the empress, probably won't rush to do so. I can furthermore highly recommend the service offered by Michael and Grover; they're really nice people and true enthusiasts. They let their product do the talking and I can't imagine that there'll be many returns under their 60 day trial policy!
Finally (if there is such a thing in this hobby), my system is as follows:
Audio Synthesis Transcend (ASL) and blackgated Dax Discrete
CJ 140 Amp (unmodified, as yet....)
Diapason Adamantes 3 speakers (modified)
Townshend stand
Shunyata Hydra 8 plus Anaconda vxs / Xindak Gold pc on the amp
Finally (if there is such a thing in this hobby), my system is as follows:
Audio Synthesis Transcend (ASL) and blackgated Dax Discrete
CJ 140 Amp (unmodified, as yet....)
Diapason Adamantes 3 speakers (modified)
Townshend stand
Shunyata Hydra 8 plus Anaconda vxs / Xindak Gold pc on the amp