Did Amir Change Your Mind About Anything?

Galen Gareis, formerly head of design for Belden offers many technical specs and reasons why he designed his Iconoclast cables, and offers specs on each cable that ships.  

Specs that have nothing to do with audio performance.  They are nice people with good intentions so lent me review samples (after I tried to buy them).  Here is the review of the iconoclast cable where I showed not only with measurements that the cable does nothing compared to a generic one, but also with a null test of music: 

As you see, the null shows nothing but noise at threshold of hearing (which is the limit of the test).  The files and null output are there to listen to.

Net, net, please don't be impressed by fancy looking "specs."  If you trust your ears, ask the manufacturer for ears-only controlled listening test results.  If you are in favor of measurements, ask them for measurements of the output of the audio device, NOT the cable/tweak.  If that doesn't change, then the cable is not doing anything extra for the 10 to 20X more money you spent on it.

@ossicle2brain : I can try to help. What Maggies do you own? What’s the rest of your equipment? What are you looking to replace?

Please post your current system here: https://www.audiogon.com/systems

I love to help you. I will only pick from Amir’s approved lists. No cables will be considered 

Maggies sound terrible according to the measurements. 

I assume you mean Magnepan LRS and not the entire line as I have only reviewed that.  Assuming you do mean the LRS, there were clear audible issues as well to my ears:

Subjective Speaker Listening Tests
I first positioned the panel right at me and started to play. What I heard sounded like it was coming from a deep well! I then dropped the little rings on the stand and repositioned the speaker as you see in the picture (less toed in). That made a big difference and for a few clips I enjoyed decent sound. Then I played something with bass and it was as if the speaker was drowned under water again. It wasn't just absence of deep bass but rather, quietness on top of that.

Even when the speaker sounded "good" you would hear these spatial and level shifts that was really strange. As the singers voice changed tonality, it would sometimes shift left and right. And change in level no doubt due to uneven frequency response. There was also some strange extended tail to some high frequency notes that would seem to go on forever.

Just when I thought I had the speaker dialed in, I leaned back some and the tonality got destroyed. You had to sit in the proverbial vice around your head to get the "right" sound out of LRS.

I applied a quick and dirty inverse fix to the response to get some semblance of neutrality:

The one PEQ shown, combined with an overall lift of the entire response made a huge difference. Speaker was no longer dull, lacking both bass and treble. Alas, after listening some, the highs got to me so I put in the right filter to fix that. And while the LRS could handle the boost in low frequencies well, bringing for the first time some tactile feedback, it did start to bottom out so I had to put that sharp filter for extreme lows.

Once there, I was kind of happy until I played the soundtrack you see at the bottom. Man did it sound horrid. Bland and some of the worse bass I have heard.

When it did sound good -- which was on typical show audiophile tracks -- the experience was good. Alas, every track would sound similar with the same height and spatial effects.

This is a highly specialized speaker that has poor general purpose.  People fall in love with its spatial qualities due to dipole design and tall image it provides.  So not surprised you speak as if it is perfect.  But perfect it is not.  Not remotely so.

And cheap Topping DACs sound great because they measure that way. 

Oh, tens of thousands of your fellow audiophiles disagree with you.  We all use them and enjoy the incredible transparency they bring to our music enjoyment.

And as you acknowledge, the are available at ridiculously low cost compared to what high-end companies charge for their DACs that are often distortion and noise factories.