Discussions about cables are always so fascinating; they bring out every nuance of thought about audio that there is! I've said this before and I'll say it again, a cable should not have a "sound". Now, the reality is, all cables DO have a "sound" in all kinds of varying degrees. The reason for this is that ALL cables, makes no difference who the manufacturer is or what kind of magic dust he sprinkles over the wire or his connectors, are filters. Every interconnect, every speaker cable, every power cord, every piece of wire in a circuit, has an impedance characteristic. Some are small enough that they are completely inconsequential, but in the case of most ic's and speaker cables you can manipulate the "sound" by manipulating it's structure in a way that changes the impedance/filtering effect that it has on a signal. That's why so many folks buy a certain cable and immediately get excited about its sound, because what has happened is that what they're listening to is now different. It may not necessarily be better, but it's different.
What a good ic (or any other cable for that matter) should do is to transfer a signal. There's a lot of good cables out there, and many of them have been mentioned here. They're all worth a try, if you can muster the money and time to do that, but certainly digging through the forums here and getting good ideas for starting points is a good practice. Ultimately, you need to find what works best for your budget and your slection of components. For myself, that's PNF Audio. Everything in my system is PNF Audio and I've yet to find a better ic than their ICON product. Yes, I've used/tried almost everything else desbribed here, and many are VERY good, like Kimber and AQ, but I've found that with a wide range of equipment, PNF consistently does for me what a cable should and that is truthfully transfer a signal with the least amount of filtering or signal deradation possible. Plus, at it's price, it's a steal. One of the best pound for pound values in all of audio IMHO. That doesn't mean that you may like something else, and that's perfectly fine, that's just what I have found after many years and lots of experimentation works best for me.
The laws of diminishing returns and the marketing of the snake oil vendor are probably more prevelant in the world of cables than almost anywhere else in audio. Good cables are worth it, but stupidly expensive ones usually are not. Be careful out there.... :)
