DNM Speaker cable

Hi Peter,

I used DNM Reson for a long while in various systems. Pound for pound, it's the best cable that I've come across in value terms, and you have to spend quite a lot more to improve on it by enough to justify the price.

Downsides - it's fairly ugly, and it's a little brittle should you have to bend it around difficult corners.

Upsides - open, neutral, capable, fractionally lean in the bass but cleaner and truer than NAC-A5.

More susceptible to rabbit teeth than A5, which is why we're still using A5 on the Nait and in the (non rabbit) house we were using Nordost Red Dawn (which blows either cable away)...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

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Originally posted by Top Cat:

Upsides - open, neutral, capable, fractionally lean in the bass but cleaner and truer than NAC-A5.

... and in the (non rabbit) house we were using Nordost Red Dawn (which blows either cable away)...

_TC '..'_

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Yes, I'm finding that there's a very poised clear quality to the DNM that's very seductive. Making it much easier to follow drum patterns, for example, or to hear how how each instrument plays it's part in the overall tune. The downside is the leanness in the bass, which seems variable to me, i.e. last night I thought it was important, but this morninmg it seemed OK. Last night, Evelyne and I listened to 'The Border', Lila Downs - this is mostly sung in spanish and Evelyne remarked that she felt that she understood spanish better with the DNM. That clarity helps to understand lyrics.

I'm worried about Red Dawn, If I had other than a Nait 5 I'd be interested in going for it, gulp!, but I'm afraid that it's electrical characteristics would not be suitable for Naim.

Peter

I'd stick with DNM for a while - it helped my N805s a lot and your B&Ws are similar. There is a cable that gives top notch performance for less than Nordost silly money: Townshend Isolda.

The downside is its very open and also full in the bass - it'll show up weaknesses the DNM masks, especially bass-wise. Proof of this for me was that when I went from DNM to Townshend I had to add 80-90 Hz bass traps (and 50hz which I'm waiting for). RPG software showed up room problems at these frequencies not evident before. Nonetheless, once treated, I'll be another step down the road towards fast, tuneful yet deep bass . . .

I have not done scientific comparisons but I would suggest that Red Dawn is very good but also very hi-fi. Isolda is probably more natural, and its a lot cheaper at £50pm.

Alex

Alex

Please tell me about the N805S. I have the Matrix 805S and thinking of upgrading to N805S. I was informed that B$W just introduced the "signature" version of the N805S very much want to buy. How is the sound and what are the strength and weakness of the N805S?

Not wishing to offend anyone, here is my assessment of the N805s:

The Kevlar mid/bass is a superb unit and the cabinet is well made and good-looking. These two aspects provide all the strengths - fast, tuneful, involving, relatively transparent for a wooden box.

The weaknesses are two-fold: a) the port - the bass can be one-note and can boom, although unlike some, I don't consider ports to be instant death - they work well in the WB Arcs (altogether a better but colder speaker); b) the tweeter - I don't like metal domes that much but these, despite all the Nautilus song and dance, are pretty crap versions of a design I don't like. I dismantled enough of them to know they're about 20p to make regardless of any R&D costs. Its not a disaster but its easily bettered by Scanspeak, Dynaudio or Morel units.

I think Peter's CDM1NTs are much better value.

N805s (and Peter's) are much improved by sitting them on HNE granite stands with Nordost Pulsar Points between the speakers and the stands.

Hope this helps,

Alex

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I think Peter's CDM1NTs are much better value.

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He has CDM1SEs, and they do sound very musical, i.e. they play the tune, unlike the 600 series.

Regards,

Steve.

The proof of the pudding...

Most of our American friends seem to be using subs with 805s to good effect (i'm not so sure myself).

I rang up RPG - Acoustic GRG in Folkestone - (sorry can't remember number), gave my room dimensions and they kindly ran their software for me (I had already bought quite a lot of foam).

The Pulsar Points were a surprising improvement over the blutac - 3 to each speaker (they are sold in sets of 4) - but I wouldn't expect them to just solve a bass problem.

Alex

PS Sorry about mis-naming your speakers Peter

I'm now away until 30th. . .

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Originally posted by JeremyT:
I contributed to an earlier thread on alternatives to NAC5 and relayed my experiences with DNM Reson to Peter and may have influenced him to dabble a bit. I tried DNM because I was not happy with my N805s and then Nait5 through the Naim cable. I have found the DNM similarly seductive especially with a vinyl front-end.

Bass is however a bit of an issue with the N805s which the DNM has not helped. I went for the N805s after extended listening at Graham’s and tried half a dozen alternatives and the N805s came out tops as the best all rounder apart from some ridiculously expensive (in the context of my system) Shahinians. I also went for the hne granite stands mentioned by Alex S which made the B&Ws stand out from the pack. I am relying on blutak at present as spikes will not work - I had not considered the Nordost but may have a go.

At the moment I am content going through a relatively acoustic phase in my listening but Saturday morning blasts of Led Zep are not fulfilling. I am toying with a REL sub to help out but have a complicated room shape which I probably need to assess first. Where can I find the software mentioned?

Regards

Jeremy

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Software for room assessement ( did I get the right number of essess ?) go here
CARA

Jeremy, you and Alex are both advocates of the DNM and you both have help persuade me to try the DNM. It's 90% seductive. The bass issue is something with which I may yet come to terms. I played some Soullive (hammond B3, guitar, drums trio) that has the bass parts played by the organ pedals. It's very easy to follow with DNM cables and they do limit the B&W tendancy of one note bass. It just doesn't quite seem to have the right weight compared with the rest of the frequency range. For PR&T fans, the DNMs are the equal or superior to NACA5, they will handle slow jazz with aplomb and boogie with the best. They are probably a godsend if you consider that your bass is too unruly. I also played a great jazz CD from Stephano Battista, essentially a saxophone(soprano and alto) lead quartet, on this recording the Piano had the right weight, at least for my lounge and the drums were very nicely stated.

The cables only have about 7 hours of music through them so I'm optimistic that they'll give me long term satisfaction.

Peter

Welcome to the prologue. What I said about DNM/Reson held true whilst the source was the Micromega Stage 6 CD player, a beautiful sounding CD player with very good ‘tone’ as our more senior forum members might have call it. I replaced the Stage 6 with a Naim CDX, a player known for it’s rhythmic discipline. This exposed a shortcoming in the DNM/Reson that hitherto went unnoticed.

Excuse me while I digress. The assembly of a satisfying hifi system needs much attention, because it’s not always clear where the goalposts are. If you’re looking for a system that helps you understand what the musicians and/or composer are aiming at with you’ll use one set of criteria as a measure. If you are aiming for beauty of sound, then your focus will be elsewhere, i.e. you may be so focused on getting the decay of a piano just right, that you may not notice that the timpanist has gone to sleep. In effect another set of measures. These converging approaches are often polarised in the terms ‘Flat Earth’ and ‘Round Earth’. The Stage 6 is a beautiful sounding, if slightly loose player, whilst the CDX is all about keeping on top of the beat.

The DNM/Reson marshalled my system and gave it more rhythmic focus, I didn’t realise how it did this until I installed the CDX. The DNM/Reson, compared to Naim NACA5, dramatically accelerates the decay of a note, which is something that my CDX fronted Nait5/HiCap/B&W CDM1Se system does not need. This was particularly evident on the rockier songs, Johnny Lang’s ‘Lie to Me’ being an example where the exuberance of his voice was attenuated that made the song too polite, the wildness and yearning in his voice gone. I said that there was more ‘noise’ with the Naca5 in the system. I believe now that this noise was coming from the Stage 6, because introducing the CDX has improved vinyl replay!

So I enjoyed the few months with the DNM and think it’s a good, or even great cable, to introduced some flat earth discipline in your system, but it’s too much if your system already has a pedigree flat earth source.

Peter

Peter, that's interesting. I found the DNM sounded a lot 'cleaner' than NAC-A5, but here I am, temporarily listening to a system which has bags of PRaT and all the good stuff, running with NAC-A5. This works very well, though I think at the expense of some speed and detail.

The system is pure DNM, so you'd think their cable would be best, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and I think I prefer the NAC-A5, for all its flaws, to the shorts runs of Reson I still own. Admittedly the DNM cable is 'cleaner' sounding, and I have to add that I never have heard any shortening of the decay of notes, but there's a cohesion about the PA3^S driving my Neats with A5 that is quite splendid, given the fact that the A5 is not the normal cable to use in a system like mine - in fact, DNM Reson is, so I'm kinda working in reverse here.

The Nordost cables that I've tried do take things to another level - Red Dawn cleans everything up and sorts out the bass issues with Reson and always seems to sound a lot more 'alive' and 'transparent' than the Reson or A5. SPM takes things on even further, though I've not yet heard it terminated correctly with 2mm bananas - I used 4mm to 2mm adaptors, and even then it was amazing.

Your point about thinking about the 'end goals' is vital - it's the focus of where we go with our systems, and what works in one system may work because it's compensating in one way or another for some weakness in that system. Moving up to another system - CDX in your case - may show a cable to be inferior.

This is why I'm officially changing my viewpoint on NAC-A5. Previously I have regarded it as a bit 'mickey mouse' as it seemed to hold back my system but surprisingly I now rate it, though it pales beside the Nordost cables in my opinion. However, at the money A5 is a bargain and I now understand why so many stick by it especially within the Naim family.

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

Marco,

Yeah, but in some ways DNM does actually recommend that I use DNM Reson cable - same argument I guess - though the Nordost cables are to my ear demonstrably better - and few, hearing the comparison, would argue in the favour of the DNM I should think.

I sometimes wonder whether the choice of speaker cable might be better dictated by the speaker manufacturer - any thoughts?

When are you next up in Scotland, by the way? We really must meet up for a beer or three...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

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Originally posted by Top Cat:
Peter, that's interesting. I found the DNM sounded a lot 'cleaner' than NAC-A5, but here I am, temporarily listening to a system which has bags of PRaT and all the good stuff, running with NAC-A5. This works very well, though I think at the expense of some speed and detail.

... and I have to add that I never have heard any shortening of the decay of notes, but there's a cohesion about the PA3^S driving my Neats with A5 that is quite splendid,...

....

Your point about thinking about the 'end goals' is vital - it's the focus of where we go with our systems, and what works in one system may work because it's compensating in one way or another for some weakness in that system. Moving up to another system - CDX in your case - may show a cable to be inferior.

This is why I'm officially changing my viewpoint on NAC-A5. Previously I have regarded it as a bit 'mickey mouse' as it seemed to hold back my system but surprisingly I now rate it, though it pales beside the Nordost cables in my opinion. However, at the money A5 is a bargain and I now understand why so many stick by it especially within the Naim family.

_TC

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I think that DNM is cleaner than Naca5, but doesn't have the viscera that Naca5 has. As you, I'm now a born ag'in Naca5 user. I only noticed the shortening of decay in direct A/B comparison with Naca5, but I 'felt' it because rock songs didn't have the right 'energy' to me. The Stage 6 I enjoyed for 5 years as a CD player, thinking that Cd was certainly inferior to LP. Then I discovered what a dedicated mains could do for CD, It bumps CDs performance a lot more than Lps, imho. Then the CDX has upped the CD stakes again, on well recorded CDs I don't feel a yearning for the LP. If only system building were taking ***** components and using ***** cables and everybody would be happy. There's a safety in taking the Naim approach that gives a you a safety net whilst walking the tightrope.

Marco,

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if I owned a system from any any other manufacturer other than Naim, I'd use Nordost cables throughout - no question.

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That's what I used before in my previous system.

Peter

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"I sometimes wonder whether the choice of speaker cable might be better dictated by the speaker manufacturer - any thoughts?"

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Several months ago I tried NACA5 between my Nait 3 and Monitor Audio R352s. It certainly changed the sound, but didn't really seem to work with the R352s, making the bass too flabby and losing much top-end detail. On the upside, LP surface noise and static almost disappeared.
After a couple of weeks I went back to my old QED79 which seems to control the bass better and provides much more top-end detail at the cost of some excessive brightness on CDs of dubious mastering quality.
This makes me think your assertion is probably correct. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there's a cable which will be a better match, but till I find it I'll persevere with the 79.

David

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Originally posted by David Stewart:

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"I sometimes wonder whether the choice of speaker cable might be better dictated by the speaker manufacturer - any thoughts?"

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Several months ago I tried NACA5 between my Nait 3 and Monitor Audio R352s. It certainly changed the sound, but didn't really seem to work with the R352s, making the bass too flabby and losing much top-end detail. On the upside, LP surface noise and static almost disappeared.
After a couple of weeks I went back to my old QED79 which seems to control the bass better and provides much more top-end detail at the cost of some excessive brightness on CDs of dubious mastering quality.
This makes me think your assertion is probably correct. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there's a cable which will be a better match, but till I find it I'll persevere with the 79.

David

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David,

I'd argue that instead of searching to disguise the problems in your source by careful speaker cable selection, That you might be asking yourself if there is anything wrong with the source. When I was using the DNM I was compensating an inferior source component, The Micromega Stage 6 (Damn that stings to say it was inferior). Getting the source sorted showed that the the Cable was 'over compensating'. Even Jeremy has noticed the same problem with Led Zep. It's odd to me that you're most happy with what is generally considered the first rung on the speaker cable upgrade ladder after bell wire.

Peter

Paul,

I used Solar Wind and it works well when going into a naim amp. It might indeed be a a bit zingy, and as you use mana then maybe zinging cables might not be your thing ?

Peter

Interconnects

Rhythmic, tuneful, open-sounding, but a bit bass-shy, and lacking in drive at the bottom end. Good for the money, imho.

Cables

Truly awful one-note gritty overblown bass. They survived for about 5 seconds in my system, and were quickly idntified by me as being the culprit for the same awful sound in another system on another day.

Regards,

Steve.

It's just a pleasure to hear music as it was intended to be heard.

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It's odd to me that you're most happy with what is generally considered the first rung on the speaker cable upgrade ladder after bell wire.

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Yes, it is strange and I don't for one moment doubt there are better cables than QED79, but on the other hand it is well run in and seems to work well with the R352s which A5 didn't
Sadly current finances don't permit upgrade of the present source (CD3.5/HiCap, LP12/Ittok), so I'll have to soldier on with wot I got for now.
In the meantime I think I'll try DNM and possibly Rumour or Odyssey as upgrades to the 79.

David

Save yourself some money. Odyssey is a nice cable which gives solid soundstaging architecture. It also does PR&T, but the Naca5 does the PR&T as well with more tune. The soundstaging isn't quite as good, but if you listen to music rather than "hi-fi" it's much better.

If they swapped the prices round between Chord Odyssey (£17/m) and NACA5 (£6.60/m) I'd still buy the Naca5, and I'm using Densen amps which can take any cable I may choose, unlike Naim amps which have to use Naca5.

As for the DNM cable, ask Peter...

Regards,

Steve.

It's just a pleasure to hear music as it was intended to be heard.

Believe me, I just wish A5 would do the job with my Monitor Audio R352s, but the simple truth is it doesn't
I had a set of well run-in A5 cables on evaluation from my local dealer for 3 weeks and regardless of what I did to tune things like speaker position etc., the A5 just didn't work with the R352s.
A5 may well be the best cable in the world but I just can't make it work with my speakers.

David

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Originally posted by David Stewart:

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It's odd to me that you're most happy with what is generally considered the first rung on the speaker cable upgrade ladder after bell wire.

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Yes, it is strange and I don't for one moment doubt there are better cables than QED79, but on the other hand it is well run in and seems to work well with the R352s which A5 didn't
Sadly current finances don't permit upgrade of the present source (CD3.5/HiCap, LP12/Ittok), so I'll have to soldier on with wot I got for now.
In the meantime I think I'll try DNM and possibly Rumour or Odyssey as upgrades to the 79.

David

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Well I can hardly say the sources are naff ! The DNM is very detailed, at least superficially, but as I noted it diminishes note decay, so it's kind of like increasing the clarity on a digital picture, the objects stand out clearer relative to each other but the objects are more distorted. I can tell you that I definitely wasn't happy with Rock using CDX as a source. OTOH, the 3.5 is going to have a different presentation so YMMV.

Peter

The A5 cables were on loan from my local dealer for 3 weeks, but they weren't new and clearly had considerable mileage, judging by the wear to the printing.
Personally I'm not surprised, only disappointed that A5 didn't work with the R352s. When all is said and done, A5 is optimised for Naim electronics and Naim speakers, perhaps it's asking too much to expect it to correctly match other speaker designs as well. In your case it does and that's a bonus.

David

Marco,

I couldn't agree more. The Nordost cables do seem to operate as you describe and once you hear what they do you may find it difficult to go back. I tried 2m runs of SPM on the Nait-2 (yes, a somewhat daft thing to do admittedly) and I preferred the NAC-A5 in many ways, due to the fact that the Nordost did reveal so much new information (not just music) and some of that wasn't necessarily a good thing.

The best way I can describe the better Nordost cables is as 'no cable' - i.e. it works better than any others I have tried at getting out of the way of the natural sound of the system - whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on the system and whether it was designed to us A.N.Other cable such as NAC-A5, but in a nutshell, SPM makes systems cabled with 'other' cables sound congested, imprecise, bloated and slow. The downside of SPM is that it is a warts and all cable, and nothing can be hidden.

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

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Originally posted by David Stewart:
The ... A5 is optimised for Naim electronics and Naim speakers, perhaps it's asking too much to expect it to correctly match other speaker designs as well. In your case it does and that's a bonus.

David

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That's a valid point. And I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly until my recent experience. I was tempted to try DNM because of the positive experiences of Alex S. & JeremyT both of whome used or are using B&W 805 speakers, that I consider would have a similiar voicing to my CDM1Se. They criticised the B&W 805 for an imprecision in the bass, Alex S. in particular has bass overloading problems and was looking for ways to make the bass more precise and tuneful. The results with DNM and the previous CD player were leaner but more lisible. I'm now less convinced of the necessity to match the cable to the speakers, I'm inclined to think it's more a question of matching the cables to what's in front of it, i.e. amps & sources. As I understand them, that's what TC and Marco hint at in their posts.

Peter

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I'm inclined to think it's more a question of matching the cables to what's in front of it

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Good point.

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The DNM is very detailed, at least superficially, but as I noted it diminishes note decay

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Not in my experience with my present equipment - just try a cleaned record and there's beautiful and plentiful note decay using DNM bullet plugged ICs and Isolda speaker cable. May I respectfully suggest that note decay is not the greatest strength of Naim CD players.

As far as Nordost is concerned, I sat through the whole of Lars's recent dem and did not agree with the hierarchy at all. In the IC range I liked Solar Wind, Red Dawn and Valhalla but not the others, and all of them, despite being impressive, had that glare and fatiguing quality I now associate with silver cables. I thought the £2.50 IC from Dixons was impressive.

Nonetheless, I haven't lived with the Nordost so these are impressions only. Far be it from me to slag off a cable for years and then suddenly decide its actually rather good.

Alex

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In the IC range I liked Solar Wind, Red Dawn and Valhalla but not the others

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That's really unusual. The slightly 'edgy, glassy' quality that some find with the lower Nordost cables is gone by the time you get to Red Dawn, and to exclude SPM (which is much, much, much better and fuller than Red Dawn) and Quattro-fil (see above) seems a bit strange. However, sometimes there is an element of 'balance' to which we become accustomed, which would account for your preference for the Solar Wind and Red Dawn, but Valhalla? AFAIK It's far closer to SPM and Quattro-fil in sound than it is to the others... but much, much more expensive...

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Far be it from me to slag off a cable for years and then suddenly decide its actually rather good.

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...are you alluding to my change of mind on NAC-A5? Nah, putting it in context, I've just decided that it works better than I expected it to - though I still don't rate it as highly as the DNM for most systems, and it's certainly not as good as the SPM in any way other than the fact that it was voiced around the Naim amps which I am using in the second system...

TC '..'
"Girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a Muffin..."

PS. I may have clouded the issue by converting my single-wire NAC-A5 to use with my biwire Neat Petites by stripping back some wire and threading the cable through the +ve and -ve terminals respectively - maybe this is what has brought the A5 out of the dark ages in my current makeshift system...