@dr3 "also sounded harsh - as if they were not broken in enough, although they were trade-ins, not brand new."
Fwiw, the exact same occurred for me, on my first go-around. I came from the direction you want to revert to now. I had just resold my two pairs of Golden Reference ICs to guys with edgy SS amps wanting to stream various qualities of content. Those Gold Refs were part of a brief rerun Cardas did on those over a year ago. After those, I was still looking for smoothness, transparency with nice tone and texture. On first attempt, tried new Clear Reflections and Clear Cygnus. Liked them okay first try. Both got returned prematurely - as I painstakingly realized later. I should know better having done Cardas for 30+ years now. Duh.
Coiled up Cardas sound bad imo right out of the bag/box. Absolutely benefit after 14-21 days (30 days preferred) just to relax the conductors and dialectric inside. Everything events out given some patience and not fighting it. Retested this theory many times even with used cables from Cardas and Analysis Plus. Impatience gets the best of us some times. It's not ears/brain adjusting. There is real truth to what George Cardas reports here, along with other reasons why these damn cables take so long to settle in. Weird! Exact same thing use to occur with my older Golden Cross interconnects if coiled up in a bag/box sitting a side on rotation. Expect 14+ days, all over again.
Round-2: A year later, 2nd retry. Today In my system today is two pairs of Clear Reflection ICs at two sources and one pair Clear Cygnus between my tube preamp and two tube monobock tube amps. The Clear Refs were horrible the first 1-7 days, veiled over, could not double-up end to end, at all. Cygnus was weird too, grainy when brand new. With added reminders and pressure from an insider colleague, gave it 30 days of relaxing, settling in, more play time. Low and behold - Wallah, there it is!
If you do go with Golden Reference, give them time too. imo, I’d look real close again at your beloved older gen "Cardas Cross on the dac". I still have some older Cross too. Nice but just not at the same level of the newer design, quality, of later conductor and dialectric materials now. Maybe you can retry some loaners from TheCableCo.
To triple-prove this time/relaxing theory, I compared 30 day old In-use Clear Ref ICs to a 2nd brand new unused coiled up pair of Clear Ref ICs, side by side. Was like listening to completely different cables. Weird, perplexing, all of the above. Then gave that 2nd pair a full 30 days too, and it all evened out and came into focus too.