Oh, be careful! This was how I started digging the rabbit hole, and I am still digging. I predict I will not stop digging until I reach the other side of earth.
Wait! I reached China already, and I am digging back towards this side of the world again. 
But I must say that you will be thrilled with any of the Iconoclast lines of cable.
This is what we live for!!
I know. I’m staying away from Al and Luca!
Palouse, just wait till you insert Iconoclast speaker cable! I upgraded to Series 2 TPC spkr. cable. This was the first time in 30 years that my wife didn’t start the listening by asking, “How much?” She heard the improvement from 2 rooms away. When I nervously later asked, “So, do you want to know how much they cost?” She replied that it didn’t matter because they were worth it. I still cannot believe her response.
Our system: PS M700s powering Maggie 2.7s. Also, StellarGold DAC, Jay’s transport, Rogue Perseus Magnum (tube) preamp, 2 Rels, …
I would like to do the same, these are really dangerous acquaintances!
Careful with what you post. You could become forum fodder. 
Time to order your full loom of stealth. Lol
If the marriage survives that you are golden. 
I actually do value Luca’s objective approach to improvements. I just lack his bank account and I have a wife who is not as enamored with my audio spending as I wish she was; actually, truth be told, we’d both rather spend our money on great wine!
Al is the ultimate in continual incremental improvements. He’s my source of unknown unknowns.
@Paul172 we all have to start somewhere! 
I agree! I started by throwing out courtesy cables. My Audioquest cables I started with are definitely not ultra high end but a major improvement over the noisy freebie cables and they didn’t break the bank. At under $150 an easy upgrade for most.
Hello Paul172,
I’m an Iconoclast guy. The reason I have not gotten Iconoclast interconnects is my tube preamp does not “do” XLR. We like the Rogue Persius Magnum. Maybe in a few years the preamp will be upgraded, so I quietly wait in stealth mode. 
Next is room treatment.
Stealth makes RCA’s also. Lol
At the TAMPA show the Magi room used ICONOCLAST cables.
Galen
Not sure the roadblock to listen to the 1X4 RCA ICONOCLAST design. True some stuff goes for the perfect voltage signal single-ended provides. You can’t get that with XLR which has a CUB, capacitance unbalance, but XLR will kill low frequency electromagnetic noise if you have that.
Galen
Something completely different. I’m listening to 103.5 on my SD 3100 HV digital DAC with the FM tuner. Well, it sounds great! Digital FIM is far, far better than some of my sources! It is open, extended, tight and dynamic. None of the analog FM booming vocal heaviness. I’ll try different channels as some “share” the bandwidth between two or even three channels so lower fidelity. If you see the -1, -2 you know the bandwidth is shared.
Why did I do this? I switched from my digital SD card in the car to FM, and it sounded damn good. Hum, I do have that FM tuner in the DAC, why? I guess it is worth it to stick it in there!
I get to hear all the oldies and tolerate a few commercials every half hour or so.
Galen
As a frequent poster I need to share something.
I am one of the millions of faceless US Government workers facing possible termination. Like others I arrive at my desk daily fearing another email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Evil Overlord. Telling me I am not productive, wasting government money, demanding 5 bullet points to justify my existence, and for me to consider employment elsewhere. With every gleeful slash of a phallic oversized chainsaw seen in news video clips and pictures. I fear an electronic pink slip will arrive in my email. Leading me to question my decision to buy eggs, and long-term plans to pay my bills and mortgage.
Will I get credit for being the government employee who has started working one hour before his official tour of duty every day for the last 12 years. Who wore a mask, sat at his desk, and never worked a day from his home throughout the COVID end of days. Who works every day maximizing their efficiency and has always received excellent performance ratings. Who quietly eats his lunch at his desk and often works overtime to have enough time to fulfill the mission.
I now witness my fellow Government workers daily succumb to worry and stress related headaches and gastrointestinal concerns.
To cope with it all I have turned to microdosing an old drug. I am not talking about Shrooms, LSD, Cocaine, Valium or even Prozac. I am taking about music. Research has found music can boost the body’s natural Neurotransmitters. The Neurotransmitter Serotonin can help regulate and improve mood and wellbeing. Dopamine contributes to drive, anticipation, reward, and contentment. Music can help to reduce depression, anxiety, improve mental performance and creativity.
As I ponder my life and what brought me here today. I think about how much more accessible the music drug has become since I was young in the 60’s. I remember the days where new over the counter music drugs were available mostly through my local record store or radio. I remember anxiously peering over the shoulder of the counter salesclerk for the upcoming new releases and those records not yet in the record bins. Counting the money in my pocket pondering if I could afford a new album, cassette, 8 track tape, and later CD. Wondering would my addiction, my jonesing be satisfied with a couple of hits.
When I was broke and in new music withdrawal I would buy 45’s, hoping the B side would not contain something lame that no one wanted to hear. I admit more than once I purchased music off the street through bootleg vendors and felt a sense of shame afterwards. I remember late nights passing around our choice records and getting high on the music with friends in a darkened basement. The impromptu music and hormone fueled dance parties in high school and trying to impress the girls.
I remember my first taste of being an Audiophile. Cobbling together my system with found audio parts and tweaking, oh the endless tweaking and fixing. Sitting by a boombox radio waiting for my favorite music to play. Blank Cassette Tape pre-loaded, record and pause button preset, anxiously rocking, fingers trembling at the ready, then quickly hitting start to record. Always working at perfecting the art of catching most of the recording, listening for the intro, the fade out, and stopping the recording just before the announcer’s voiceover. All in the name of creating that perfect Mixtape, often to appeal to another drug of choice the most recent love interest.
Thankfully my drug is so much more readily available through multiple music download services. My favorite micro-buzz is now through Qobuz. With recent world events I rely even more on the availability of my favorite music drug. Which thankfully does not seem to be subject to tariffs or in short supply.
Years ago, I read a book by Dr. Gray Aumiller called “Keeping it Simple.” He encourages in a time of stress and loss to take an inventory of our resources, to look at our knowledge and skills, the people we know and the things we own. In doing so there is often a sense of gratitude, relief, renewal, and opportunity.
With this in mind, and for distraction from the daily news cycle. I decided to reexamine my BAV Power cables. Since late 2024 my system is now almost all Belden Iconoclast cable from the power cords to the Interconnects, to the subwoofer cables. My last acquisition in 2024 was BAV power cables to replace several other well-known Audio manufactures audiophile grade cables whose names will not be mentioned. I switched the cables gradually one component at a time over the course of a month. This would allow me to discern if what I was hearing with each cable swap was better, worse or the same. In addition, I experimented with swapping 10- and 12-gauge BAV power cables to each component. The BAV’s now have at least 2200 hours on them.
I swapped the BAV out today and inserted my previous Audiophile grade power cable into my PSA BHK Preamplifier. What an obvious difference. With the BAV power cables the soundstage was vastly larger and on some tracks the music enveloped me. There was more information there, realism, presence, more easily discernable instruments, and vocals. Bass notes had more nuance, layering and depth.
In summary, the psychedelic aspects and the high from music reproduction sought by most audiophiles was greatly diminished without the BAV power cable. With the BAV cable the phantom center image, apparitions of vocalist and instruments floating in discrete spaces, expanded soundstage width and depth, transparency, vanishing speakers were more there and a real trip.
As I have my whole life I will continue planning for the worse and hoping for the best. Toward that end, trading in my old PSA preamp toward owning the new PS Audio Preamp I understand will debut at AXPONA is now not possible for me. Nor is replacing the last of my Power Cables with BAVS. Oh well, at least I still have my old Boombox, Radio, Cassette Player.
Thanks for reading and allowing me the catharsis of writing during this stressful time. Best wishes to everyone in your upcoming endeavors.
Just to be wide ranging in thought, while working at Belden we had to justify our existence EVERY MONTH. Time in the seat was not important, that was the past, Belden was paying for now and future efforts. Public companies that stay around for hundreds of years absolutely have to manage productivity of people and things.
The down sizing is cheaper by the dozen as the saying goes, so there would be sizeable “adjustments” made in one fell swoop. Also to be considered, a company changes about every five years and so do the objectives. Do you fit into that course change? Being good at what you do has to be valued in the “new” direction. Plenty of highly skilled people were sent off with valuable but unapplicable skills.
That is the private world and how it works. This is how capitalism works. It places people where they are most productive and efficient. Yes, the placement phase is a drag for sure. But overall it is why this system is the best society has ever seen. When we ignore the proper placement phase, efficiency drops and objectives get blurred. Should we make tanks or cars? Should we sell consumer commodities or be a charge card company (guess who those two were!). One is all but gone and the other ditched the idea it was good at what it wasn’t right before it close it’s doors. At that point, everyone hits the streets, not some.
The placement phase prevents total collapse of the system. No form of business escapes this. We need special skills to build the house, but after that the skill needs to go build something else. The usefillness is gone at some point. We sort of rent the skills for a time. Call a plumber? We rent that skill and he is placed over and over. Sure, some skills are sticky (plumber’s always have some work) and some aren’t and need to be retrained (programmers in a specific program language). The placement stage is and always will be all around us in capitalism.
I went from making super high-end Ethernet cable to audio cables. I was placed somewhere else! Belden didn’t need that analog skill, so I had to place the skill where it was valued or…go back to digital design. At the end of the month my boss suggested I make the decision to stay with digital or I need to place myself somewhere else. The results were leveraged as far as Belden possibly saw profitable, the 2468 XLR design cable, long term based on volume. This is all logical and fair.
When we are placed again, is it often for the better as we are much happier using proper skills in the proper place because we re-establish VALUE. Not just to us, but your new employer. Never think that the placement phase is damaging, it isn’t. It should be understood to be highly beneficial to YOU. Even super skilled workers that are let go are better off maximizing their skills than just hanging around being unhappy and inefficient at the wrong tasks. It is often a blessing to be recognized for what you can do and be hired, or let go to maximize who you really are elsewhere.
Don’t get me started on retirement, here we are constantly hiring and fireing (re-placing) talent to stay afloat on a fixed income. It never stops. What also never stops is the impact of our music like Dr. Pain points out. We can go from big bang fancy to a little boom box and still get the exact same psychological impact, all for the good. And I was worried about how FM sounds and not the music being played!
Galen
Well said Galen. The folks who reported to me had to justify their job and paycheck regularly thru progress reports and personal plans.
And I had to answer to my management on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis.
It was made clear at the interview stage.
And we were very well paid and well cared for if we performed, bringing value to the company.
Though I am not in your unenviable position of defending your good work, I feel your pain, Dr. Pain. If music and the pursuit of reproducing it better is your calming elixir, so be it. It is my drug of choice in these trying times.
What’s happening now isn’t really an informed and educated “adjustments”. It’s more akin to this:
I too feel your pain, Dr. pain. Stay strong, know that you have support and is not alone, and enjoy the music 
@DrPain Thank you for sharing your experiences, especially the palliative effects of music.
