Nordost Red Dawn to ValKYRJA

You might want to look at the Nordost Frey, which many experts found better than the Valkyrja for a fraction of the price, hence the reason to discontinue the Valkyrja. You could also listen to Nordost Tyr, which is the model replacing the Valkyrja in the Nordost reference line.

I personnaly have the Nordost Frey and I am quite impressed with their sound, fast, full sounding, great mid. I think they would match well with your McIntosh gear which are known to have a slow and kind of fat sound (and I don't mean that in a negative way). My local Mac dealer uses Nordost cables with their Mac equipment and the sound is great.

The higher you go the better bass you have within the Nordost line. But I would go for the new Nordost line, which is arguably better than the older line. None the less, even Valhalla is on the lean side of the neutral. I cheaper cable not made by Nordost might give you all the bass and warmth what is difficult to achieve with Nordost.

The only reason that I was interested in the Valkyrja was because they were discontinued and can be bought used at a good price. I don't know too much about the new Nordost cables though, but would be interested to get more information on the new line on the differences in sound quality.