laid back, warm interconnects with tight bass clean highs

Take a look at Bear Labs Silver Lighting Interconnect. It might work well with your system.

Try a Wireworld Polaris, preferrably a series one or two. You can probably get one for about a hundred bucks, far less than some of the admittedly good, but overpriced Cardas products.

T.H.

Stay away from anything silver, check out the Cardas stuff.

We swapped out all of our Cardas for Red Dawns and have never looked back. We listen to a lot of fusion, Al Dimeola stuff and it has the same requirements that you stated in your original post.
Jim, Have you tried the Innersound innerconnects yet? I was thinking about trying some on the HT gear and seeing how it went.
all my best,
AJ

Ensemble. Audition their 'Dynaflux' IC, 1m $850. Nothing else compares. Transparent, Cardas, MIT, HT Magic, Discovery, Nirvana, Acosutic Zen, KS, Nordost,........