Cable ties - what are your thoughts?

Green ones tend to sound best 

Cables tend to sound better when not tied together. Try and let then hang free, keep mains away from signal and speaker cables. As you've said keep the 252 Burndy and digital cable from the SC close together but otherwise hanging loose and free is best. 

Cable ties really are a case of trial and error.  A fair bit of development time is spent by R&D figuring out exactly where to best place cable ties and also how many, and this is down just by trying and listening. A cable tie in the wrong place can seriously limit performance, so you have to be very careful. Once established on the wiring "copy", every single production unit is cable tied in exactly the same way, with the exact same number of ties in exactly the same places.

During NAC552 development, the pre-production units were found to not perform quite as well as the prototypes.  In trying to figure out why, it was discovered that a cable tie that had been added late in the day to tidy up all the wires around the Burndy connector was the culprit - removing it brought performance back up to the proper standard.

Any foam left over from using under your speaker cables should do.

=Most use cable tys in correctly. if fitted too tight  they can effect the capacitance  and also distort the csa  of the cable

Every time I've inserted cable-ties to tidy-up has ruined performance, so don't go there unless you are prepared to carefully compare - or prepared to overlook any degraded performance. For some people it seems telling themselves it can't make it worse works for them, but when I hear their system that mental trick is not passed-on to me and it generally sucks musically. Why can be discussed to death, but I can conceive enough reasons around stress and mechanical coupling to give reasons to placate the intellect.

If you want to just play music and are happy with your system, then forget about cable-ties.

DB.

Do you just mean cable ties behind your black boxes ie... Interconnects....or along the full length of speaker cable? I have some cable ties along my NACA5 to stop it being too unruly.....paranoia already setting in!!!

Richard et al....please clarify

I'd not use it for that myself - but if they are loose and not pinching and distorting the cable dielectric then you may get away with it.

DB.

Instead of cable ties, use cotton or hemp string (much more natural sounding).

It's like wearing tight underpants not good same applies to cables let them hang loose.

the only problem with loose. a lot of cables are  quite heavy/ not very flexible and that put stress at the plug end

My thoughts are that if you're overly worried about cable ties you've probably lost a fundamental connection with the music or are looking to right some other system shortcoming.

Moderated Post:  Joerand, I've edited your post.  You know why...

I have used cable ties in the past to tame my Naca 5.  It looked way neater and did not affect the sound (not that I could notice anyway).  

I will be honest, I do not think it changes the sound unless you tighten them up to such a degree that it pierces the sheathing on your cable.  I am talking speaker cable only here by the way.  I leave all other cables hanging freely behind the system.  I think the key is to ensure there are no cables with mechanical strain upon any of the connection points.  Bending your Naca 5 within reason and cable tieing it off isn't going to have an adverse affect on SQ.  It did not in my experience anyway, that's all I can base my advice on!

I'll dig out a pic of the Naca 5 tamed FYI.

Always preferred a nice patterned silk myself, can't imagine getting on with all that copper hanging around my neck. Would be a real bugger to get a decent Windsor knot in.

Willy.