I picked up a couple Klotc AC110 with Neutrik Rean RCA plugs for use in my headphone system, pretty nice sound at a silly price with infinite option in lengths. What's not to like and people here have enthused about their quality. But perhaps this is a different plug than Brian uses? I have noticed while moving the IC daily between the desktop speaker amp and the headphone amp that the Rean grip is not overly strong and I wonder how long it will hold up well?
I was auditioning the ifi Zen DAC and Topping E30 with these and liked the ifi Zen a bit more for having a little better portrayal of space and dimension but both were impressive DACS for the £100-130 range. But I really wanted to hear the Schiit Modi Multibit, so returned those and bought a used Mimby & a Douk XU208 USB>SPDIF converter. Yes here was the sense of space and musicality was what I was looking for, a real step better than the others though at 2x the cost. BTW, by the time of the Mimby I was using RFC Pluto IC with KLE Harmony plugs. All is good.
When I fettled the cables I switched back to the more succinct length of the Klotz and proceeded with life and work in the age of Covid 19. But after a couple of weeks the sense that I was missing something in the music kept intruding into my consciousness. Is the dimenionality less than what I thought when I first plumbed the Mimby? Are the piano tones slightly duller? Maybe it was just expectation bias with the Schiit multibit and it wasn't as good or different as I thought?
Wait, I auditioned the Schiit Mimby using the RFC Pluto between the DAC and amp. Let's fish that out and put it back in service... right! The tone improved, the presentation gained more depth and sense of the 3D nature of the instruments and the space they were playing in. It is as good as I first thought and the cable was a significant part of the chain. I wonder where the MC5000 and MS plug would fit in between these two cables in the portrayal of music?