Cable dressing : a necessary puzzle to solve?

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but can someone tell what is the problem with equipment rack between the speakers.

Thank you all for your replies. And sorry if I didn’t answer earlier. To much work during the day. And yesterday evening I went for some climbing. Priorities ;-)

@ADAM MEREDITH
Thank you for your link. Quite interesting!

@JAMES N & @NIGELB
I will make some changes to the setup. I’ll make the burndy and snake run parallel to each other, but not touching each other. Adam's link to Naim's recommendations is pretty insightful, it’ll help. But the explanation isn’t very clear. I have some education not only in math but also in physics, and to be honest I don’t really understand how we can obtain a similar disturbances across both cables if they are parallel, they are different cables with different signals. But I don’t really bother understanding the details if the tweak makes my new toys sound better

@NIGELB
You are right regarding the ties inducing a mechanical stress. I had the exact same thought. But the stress induced by giving the cables a specific position in space will vanish after a certain amount of time. The cables will adopt the given shape. Furthermore, the aluminium structure gives spaces/volume for the cables. Leaving the cables hanging is nice if we don’t move the rack. But I will move the rack once in a while.

@STUART.ASHEN @INTOTHEVOID
Unfortunatly the room doesn’t permit to have to rack to the side of the speakers. Furthermore, the mains and the two Ethernet sockets are just behind the rack (which is convenient). Unfortunately, sometimes compromises are inevitable…

@TOBYJUG
When I build the aluminium structure I had the cleaning in mind. Being able to clean the dust around the boxes without touching the cables was one of the goals.

@EMRE
Professional cable organizer!Why not ;-)
It took me about 10 hours for the complete setup. At 100CHF/hour I could do that for those willing to pay. But I would probably change the designation of the job. "Cable Optimizer" or "Cable Tamer" could be more attractive ;-)

What a great reply....irrespective of the views from the contributors, everyone got a reply.

Yes Tomser, very thoughtful of you to take the time to reply to us all. Much appreciated and happy listening.

jsaudio posted:

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but can someone tell what is the problem with equipment rack between the speakers.

Others will be better placed to say if these are actually good reasons, but I've picked up two, the latter from an old JV discussion.  

First, speakers being next to equipment means that vibrations from the speakers will be inflicted upon the boxes, which isn't a good thing (see e.g. the lengths Naim go to to use internal suspension, etc.).

Second, the edges of the boxes peturb the sound waves, in effect making the corners of the boxes function as point sources or something like that, which negatively affects the stereo image.  Think of sound as waves emanating from the speakers and reflecting off things in the environment - it makes sense that complicated, angular objects in the waves' path would have an effect.

Thanks,it does make sense although you would think that equipment anywhere near the speakers, even off to the side, will feel some vibration from speakers. I have my Fraim in between but set back at least a foot from rear of speakers so may not affect sound waves as much.

Thanks for the reply

Hi jsaudio--I'm constrained to having my set-up between my speakers. Before I hung pictures on the wall over the racks, I could get standing waves which were strong enough to bounce my stylus across a record at high volumes. I figure that is a very extreme case of something that everyone gets a little of if their racks are between the speakers.

I recently bit the bullet and put my speaker wire in the crawl space under the floor. I was underwhelmed by sonic differences, but my system hasn't had a "bad day" since. Cause and effect? I don't know, but I'm glad I did it.

Tomser, you have a very nice room and very clever cable setup, imo. I have a similar Naim system to yours, but on 3x3 Fraim. I never gave the cables any thought really until 7-8 months ago when I decided to follow all advice I'd read on this forum. I dismantled everything, moved around on the 300 and 300PS, creating a brain rack (NDS, 252, 300) in the middle and a brawn rack to the right (XPS DR, Supercap DR, 300PS). Before my clean up the XPS Burndy was touching almost every other cable (the NDS Hi-Line in particular) , the wall and the floor. It was a mess behind the boxes. I made sure no cables touched each other, and put only power cables and NACA5 on the floor. I also arranged the NACA5 as you did, placing them on a few small blocks of wood to elevate them from the floor. In this process I disconnected all cables and inserted them again, I did this 3-4 times with every cable to "clean" them. The whole shenanigans took me 7-8 hours. I did not expect any significant improvements in sound, but when I turned it all on again I was flabbergasted! It felt like I had added a black box, and it reminded me of the experience I had when I supercapped my old 282. IMO, it can represent a significant improvement in performance if the cables are properly dressed, and I think there is much to gain in taking care in finding the best placement for the components in your own particular setup. I will partly repeat this process as soon as my 17 pin Burndy arrives. Then I'll move around some components on my far left rack (two Supercaps and a Superline). Can't wait to do some more cable works. Greetings from Oslo!

My God, all this attention to detail.  Massaging burndies?  Cables can’t touch anything else?  Is all of this just feeding into our neuroses?  I can’t believe that Naim designs & builds such delicate flowers.  I think that at some point, much of this must seem ridiculous.  Having said that, however, I am not a self-hating Naim fan. I love their products!

docmark posted:

My God, all this attention to detail.  Massaging burndies?  Cables can’t touch anything else?  Is all of this just feeding into our neuroses?  I can’t believe that Naim designs & builds such delicate flowers.  I think that at some point, much of this must seem ridiculous.  Having said that, however, I am not a self-hating Naim fan. I love their products!

Neuroses! What me, neurotic? Never!

Just got to get those cables sorted......or......or.......well terrible things transpire. Veils, uninky greyness, poor definition at the frequency extremes, all sorts of awful things.

No, got to get all cables off the ground, not touching walls and definitely not touching each other. And Burndies desire and need massaging, they need it I tell you!

I get very, very upset when I am accused of being neurotic! Daily attention to cables (no more than a couple of hours each day) is not neurotic behaviour, it is simple good hifi housekeeping. Isn’t it?

nigelb posted:

docmark posted:

My God, all this attention to detail.  Massaging burndies?  Cables can’t touch anything else?  Is all of this just feeding into our neuroses?  I can’t believe that Naim designs & builds such delicate flowers.  I think that at some point, much of this must seem ridiculous.  Having said that, however, I am not a self-hating Naim fan. I love their products!

Neuroses! What me, neurotic? Never!

Just got to get those cables sorted......or......or.......well terrible things transpire. Veils, uninky greyness, poor definition at the frequency extremes, all sorts of awful things.

No, got to get all cables off the ground, not touching walls and definitely not touching each other. And Burndies desire and need massaging, they need it I tell you!

I get very, very upset when I am accused of being neurotic! Daily attention to cables (no more than a couple of hours each day) is not neurotic behaviour, it is simple good hifi housekeeping. Isn’t it?

Yes, that’s exactly what my therapist tells me...

wenger2015 posted:

nigelb posted:

docmark posted:

My God, all this attention to detail.  Massaging burndies?  Cables can’t touch anything else?  Is all of this just feeding into our neuroses?  I can’t believe that Naim designs & builds such delicate flowers.  I think that at some point, much of this must seem ridiculous.  Having said that, however, I am not a self-hating Naim fan. I love their products!

Neuroses! What me, neurotic? Never!

Just got to get those cables sorted......or......or.......well terrible things transpire. Veils, uninky greyness, poor definition at the frequency extremes, all sorts of awful things.

No, got to get all cables off the ground, not touching walls and definitely not touching each other. And Burndies desire and need massaging, they need it I tell you!

I get very, very upset when I am accused of being neurotic! Daily attention to cables (no more than a couple of hours each day) is not neurotic behaviour, it is simple good hifi housekeeping. Isn’t it?

Yes, that’s exactly what my therapist tells me...

You have a therapist? Why? I don’t need a therapist, no not me! Sorry got to go, just noticed some rather poorly dressed cables. 

docmark posted:

My God, all this attention to detail.  Massaging burndies?  Cables can’t touch anything else?  Is all of this just feeding into our neuroses?  I can’t believe that Naim designs & builds such delicate flowers.  I think that at some point, much of this must seem ridiculous.  Having said that, however, I am not a self-hating Naim fan. I love their products!

It just depends on whether you want to get the best from your system, or whether you don’t. If you can afford to spend thousands and not be bothered that it’s working at only a proportion of its full potential, then good for you. 

HH - I take it, then, that you obsess over your system, and that I’ve struck a nerve.  Far be it from me to put a damper on all the fun you must be having.

docmark posted:

HH - I take it, then, that you obsess over your system, and that I’ve struck a nerve.  Far be it from me to put a damper on all the fun you must be having.

What was it Dylan sang, maybe I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting soft?

Anyway  I find this post quite nasty for whatever reason. It is only designed to upset and adds nothing to the topic. 

.sjb

Good point.  I’ll put my claws away & be nicer.

docmark posted:

HH - I take it, then, that you obsess over your system, and that I’ve struck a nerve.  Far be it from me to put a damper on all the fun you must be having.

Not at all, I just do what I can to get the best from it. It takes about an hour to assemble and get all the wires in exactly the right place - not including assembling the speakers, which has a specific set of requirements. There is a continuum from just slinging it together to obsessiveness, and like most on here I’m somewhere in between. I’ve spent over £20,000 on my system and it just seems daft not to extract as much of its potential as I can. For those to whom £20,000 is small change, or to those whose hifi is just something that sits there and looks nice, it may not matter. But I love music, and I know from years of Naim ownership how careful setup can make all the difference between something sounding merely good to something sounding truly wonderful. So yes, I’m certainly having fun listening to music, which sounds absolutely lovely. 

I have never noticed a difference other than it looking neater. I cant belive  that Naim have built such  rubbish cables that if merely by touching each other they deteriorate the sound. 

Yep, agree with HH. Cable dressing and careful set up does make a difference to SQ. I have proven this to myself time and time again. Naim cables are superb if they are given some TLC. I would imagine their sheer sensitivity and transparency (particularly WRT Burndy & SuperLumina cables) both make them sound…err….transparent on the upside but suseptable to degradation from poor dressing on the downside. Just have to watch out for signs of obsession. There is a happy medium for each of us.

Having fun here too and trying to remain on the right (sane) part of that continuum!

ashrafs posted:

I have never noticed a difference other than it looking neater. I cant belive  that Naim have built such  rubbish cables that if merely by touching each other they deteriorate the sound. 

Or... try turning that one on its head: 

I can belive (sic) that Naim have built such high performing cables that merely by touching each other they deteriorate the sound.

While I don't believe that Naim builds rubbish cables - I own several of them and will buy more - I do think that the cables seem overly fussy & delicate, and that all of this attention to detail is a bit much.

docmark posted:

While I don't believe that Naim builds rubbish cables - I own several of them and will buy more - I do think that the cables seem overly fussy & delicate, and that all of this attention to detail is a bit much.

So leave them alone. No one is compelled to mess about with cables. My experience of other makes of cable is that Naim cables are no more fussy than any other brand (with the possible exception of Naim Burndies) and they all benefit from some care with dressing. I accept that Naimites might have played with cables more than is usual and have discovered the SQ benefits of cable TLC.

As I said earlier there is a healthy balance for each of us.

Sloop John B posted:

Anyway  I find this post quite nasty for whatever reason. It is only designed to upset and adds nothing to the topic. 

.sjb

Why is it when someone replies on an open forum with an opinion that you don't agree with, you post something like the above post?  You seem to do it quite often.

I find it neither nasty or upsetting, just an observation. If posts like this get you so upset, I would recommend you find yourself a new pastime other than appointing yourself the Naim forum police on morality!

badlands posted:

Sloop John B posted:

Anyway  I find this post quite nasty for whatever reason. It is only designed to upset and adds nothing to the topic. 

.sjb

Why is it when someone replies on an open forum with an opinion that you don't agree with, you post something like the above post?  You seem to do it quite often.

I find it neither nasty or upsetting, just an observation. If posts like this get you so upset, I would recommend you find yourself a new pastime other than appointing yourself the Naim forum police on morality!

Unfortunately you too have fallen into the trap of making personal comments rather than addressing the subject matter of the thread in question.

D'oh, now you have got me doing it. Over and out.

badlands posted:

Sloop John B posted:

Anyway  I find this post quite nasty for whatever reason. It is only designed to upset and adds nothing to the topic. 

.sjb

Why is it when someone replies on an open forum with an opinion that you don't agree with, you post something like the above post?  You seem to do it quite often.

I find it neither nasty or upsetting, just an observation. If posts like this get you so upset, I would recommend you find yourself a new pastime other than appointing yourself the Naim forum police on morality!

It’s called playing the man and not the ball and I don’t like it and will call it as I see it. 

.sjb