Thanks to ? for cable wisdom (who was that masked man?)

I'm a new member so I don't know what you are talking about here. But as I'm willing to give everything a try, could you please send me this Word-document by e-mail? Then I can try it too and share my experience with the other members! Thanks,

Bas

Cheers,

Calum

In my experience cable arrangement can make a HUGE difference - really brought my system "alive". Basic principle: If you can "isolate" it from any other "external" influence then it/the system will work to the peak of its performance. The following sounds obsessive, its 'evolved' ofer 2-3 years, each step clearly audible.

Best to have all the SNAICs so they hang in free-fall loops and don't touch each other, the stand, the floor. Takes some effort! I found that (where absolutely necessary) a "pull-back" rubber band looped around a snaic with the other end pinned to the wall can help keep them apart. Also a bit of crumpled tissue paper between. You might have to move the supercap up higher (mine is above my 82) to stop the long cables drooping on the floor. At worst case, try some soft foam/bubblewrap under "floor-touching" cables to ptovide some vibration isolation. **Keep SNAICS separated from the CDSII Burndy** by a few mm - it seems to carry some (digital) noise. And the Burndy bent so it doesn't touch anything, particularly the wall behind the geat, or you can get wall vibration effects influencing power into the CDSII, you've paid all that money to eliminate "jitter" so why reintroduce it via cable-induced power supply noise?

NAPSC for 82 feeds the signal switching, keeping its wire away from all others, the NAPSC away from other components, ** and very carefully isolated from physical vibration**. I sit my NAPSC on a "sandwich" comprising small glass-granite like tile, on polyethelene foam, on bubble-wrap. Vibration isolation is very important with this little box.

Untangle the mains cables. In particular, try & keep the power amp cables (with varying current flows) physically separated from low-level PSUs like XPS/Supercap. Keep cables off wooden floor which vibrate. Layers of anti-static bubblewrap (like used for shipping computer parts) are good for separating "layers" of cables. Try a 2-3mm fillet of 'blu-tack' around where the IEC plugs are inserted into Naim box sockets to control this interface. I run the cables out horizontally for a while from the PSUs (perpendicular from all snaics), support them with a rubber band hung from a (sewing) pin into the wall so they "hang" clear of wall & each other, then let them drop separately down to outlets.

Speaker cables. Key area seems to be where the cables come off the floor into the speakers & amp ends. Any physical movement (vibration) between the "touchpoints" of the cable will translate into force/vibration on the contacts. Vibratey wooden floors are particularly bad - I've had one. I found a "bubble" of bubblewrap between cable & (vibratey wooden) floor helpful here, also some thin rubber pads between NACA5 and floor about 50cm apart along its length.

For me, the speaker & power cables into my 180 (CDSII/82/supercap/180/ES22s) were the difference between "can't wait to replace it" and "really enjoying it".

And once you've done this, there's the rest of the room to tweak... If all this doesn't seem to have too much effect, then maybe the room effects are "masking" or you're just lucky to start with... I kind of found it a "step-by-step" process, it wasn't until I cleaned up one area that the next became obvious.
__________________________________________________

So happens I coppied this too. Hope this helps!

George

I wonder how many other really useful old-forum posts were archived by folk ? Would it merit a new thread here for the contribution of resurrected gems ?

There were some real "jewels" of advice on the old forum from lots of folks over the years, which have been really useful to me. Unfortunately these are largely lost now.....

PS. greetings from a fellow kiwi.....

Since installing my Mana stands, I have taken pains to dress my cables so that they observe the separation rules etc. The only real difference is; instead of using pins and rubber bands as you suggest, I have used self adhesive cable routers along the angle iron runs for both power and signal cables (separately of course). The cable routers do keep the cables from touching the Mana frame and each other, as well as nicely out of sight.

I just hope my desire for neatness doesn't compromise my music, and I would appreciate your views and any others that are fussy about appearance as well.

James

P/S: Greetings from yet another Kiwi