It's all in the details - Homegrown Silver Lace Interconnect

Excellent ICs for the price ($190 1m new), I think you will find when they fully break-in they are some of the smoothest most natural sounding silver ICs available. I find the bass response very impressive which can be a weakness is some silver designs.
Also very lightweight and extremely flexible which is a bonus. Hirsch and a couple others here are using these also.........will hear from them shortly I believe.

I would like to compare the AZ silver reference at 4.5X the price to
see how much improvement that much money buys.

Acid
Did you get that AZ Mc2 digital cable and how do you like it?

The Silver Lace are an extremely neutral interconnect, IMO. There was some sibilance in my system using the MIT MI-330 II cable than went away when I switched to the Silver Lace. Mine transmit plenty of bass...but only when it's available at the source. The coloration of the MIT cable became very obvious when I switched to the Silver Lace (I still use the MIT in my home theater setup, but not with my headphone setups).

On Sylvia Woods' "Harp of Brandiswhiere", she switches between three different harps on the album. The metal strung harp on the third track had always sounded shrill to me, and I never really liked it. With the Silver Lace, the shrillness was shown to be system sibilance due to the interconnect. I was finally able to hear why she had chosen that harp for that particular piece, where it actually fits perfectly. The piece itself never made sense to me until I could hear the full nuances she was drawing from the harp.

The only weakness may be the lack of shielding, but I've only had that become a problem once, despite using this cable in settings where there was a lot of equipment about. I use the MIT or Silver Sonic BL-1 when shielding is needed (computer system), but it's not as neutral as the Silver Lace, IMO. (Also note that I bought the kits, not the assembled version of the Silver Lace, and build my own Silver Sonic cables as needed, so anything I have may differ from factory-assembled performance)

So far, the Silver Lace is my favorite interconnect. That's not to say that there aren't better cables out there...it's just that I can't afford them.

OTOH, I'm supposed to get a pair of Outlaw Audio interconnects along with the 950 when it finally ships (Real Soon Now), so we'll see how those go...

Hirsch, can you tell us how the Outlaw PCA compares to the Silver Lace? Before hearing about the Outlaws I had my heart set on a pair of Silver Laces, but I couldn't pass up the great deal I had on a pair of PCAs.

acid, minor hijack here, but could you comment more on what you have plugged into the BPT Jr, and the improvements you saw? I'm just curious, since it was a tremendous help in my rig.

Interesting. In my system, I noticed no negative effects at all plugging the Max in, and the benefits were not subtle at all. However, I do think dynamics are a little constrained when one of my DACs is plugged in. Interesting how system-dependent these things are...

I haven't experienced any compression of dynamics at all with my rig plugged into a BP-3. I have my Max plugged into the 1000VA transformer, and the CD player plugged into the 300VA one. Both of these components draw well under an amp, and the 300VA transformer is rated for 2.5 amps, and the 1000VA transformer for 8 amps.

Yeah, I found it odd that dynamic compression (and admittedly, it isn't much) came at the DAC level in my system, since most negative reviews I read about balanced power or power conditioners tend to have them constraining the dynamics of the power amps. Nevertheless, it's happened w/ both of my DACs, so there must be some pattern. Only thing I can think of is maybe the use of an external power transformer (wall-wart) by the DACs has something to do w/ it. Only a guess, and I still feel the benefits of having the DACs plugged in far outweigh the negatives.

Silver Laces vs. Outlaw PCAs

The Silver Lace is a great IC. I could definitely hear a wider soundstage with better separation. They revealed a lot of detail also. At first, they may sound a bit bright, but after around 30 hours, they began to open up more. Upon kwarth's review of the Outlaw PCAs, I jumped on the bandwagon and purchased a pair. I immediately sold the Silver Lace more because money was getting tight. The PCAs are pretty good, but aren't as revealing as the Silver Laces, with a more collapsed soundstage (sorry Neruda). For a mid-fi system, the PCAs are definitely the way to go because they are so affordable compared the Silver Lace. For a better system, I'd recommend the Silver Lace. There might be some problem with the lack of shielding, although I haven't encountered any discernable problems.