Finally, I'm a believer

Posted by: wrc on 11 November 2015

I'm relatively new to naim but I've been 'into' Hi Fi for roughly 10 years and in that time I was lead to believe that any decent guage speaker cable was indistinguishable from the next. Snake oil and the like.

 

When I bought my UnitiLite I also bought NAC A5 because I decided to buy into naim and that's what they suggest (obviously!) so until last night I'd only ever listened to the UL via NAC A5.  It was late, I was feeling curious, and so I decided to try a little experiment and hooked up my old Audioquest FLX/Slip 14/4 cables just to hear if there really was a difference.

 

Well, there is. Thicker and duller, with less sparkle.  Still good, but quite different.  I reconnected the A5 and what struck me most was the crisper highs and much more definition in the bass. I repeated the experiment, different tracks, same result.

 

So, I'm converted.  Apologies, this is probably old news to many on this forum but for me it was a revelation.

Posted on: 11 November 2015 by nickpeacock
Here on the Naim forum you will find that Naim's own-brand snake oil is almost always better than anyone else's.
Posted on: 11 November 2015 by DUPREE
Absolutely.. It is the most wholesome and satisfying of available snake oils. 
 
In all seriousness, I think cables are the single most dishonest and seedy area of audio. The unfounded claims, ridiculous engineering premises and preposterous prices are shameful. AudioQuest is in my mind one of the larger perpetrators. They have a $10,000 Ethernet cable, despite there being no possible way this could have a bearing on sound. I thought it very unfortunate when NAIM decided to get into this overly precious cable business with SuperLumina, though I understand the business imperative to do so. I am firmly in the camp that is sticking with NACA5 and the stock interconnects - I have never heard a hyper-expensive interconnect make a justifiable "improvement' in sound other than oh, maybe that's a bit different, maybe it isn't over a properly selected reasonably high quality cable.
 
riginally Posted by nickpeacock:
Here on the Naim forum you will find that Naim's own-brand snake oil is almost always better than anyone else's.

 

Posted on: 11 November 2015 by Claus-Thoegersen
Originally Posted by DUPREE:
Absolutely.. It is the most wholesome and satisfying of available snake oils. 
 
In all seriousness, I think cables are the single most dishonest and seedy area of audio. The unfounded claims, ridiculous engineering premises and preposterous prices are shameful. AudioQuest is in my mind one of the larger perpetrators. They have a $10,000 Ethernet cable, despite there being no possible way this could have a bearing on sound. I thought it very unfortunate when NAIM decided to get into this overly precious cable business with SuperLumina, though I understand the business imperative to do so. I am firmly in the camp that is sticking with NACA5 and the stock interconnects - I have never heard a hyper-expensive interconnect make a justifiable "improvement' in sound other than oh, maybe that's a bit different, maybe it isn't over a properly selected reasonably high quality cable.
 
Justifiable improvement in terms of Price is probably the most snakeolish thing to messure. Being in the Chord camp I think cables make a difference, and the difference can be quite unbelievable, but for a Price. As always the higher the Price the less improvement you get from the extra Money you spend, unfortunately economics  also Works in the hifi World.
What you can hear, how much you can spend, and how much you want to spend are individual factors. But if you believe in a Naim cheap cable, and not just using any cable or as was common in the 70's just use  ordinary 230 v power cables to connect speakers, you are already on  the snake oil road. And the claim that only Naim cables Work are part of the snake oil ideology we more or less believe in on this forum.
Claus

 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by hungryhalibut
Originally Posted by DUPREE:
Absolutely.. It is the most wholesome and satisfying of available snake oils. 
 
In all seriousness, I think cables are the single most dishonest and seedy area of audio. The unfounded claims, ridiculous engineering premises and preposterous prices are shameful. AudioQuest is in my mind one of the larger perpetrators. They have a $10,000 Ethernet cable, despite there being no possible way this could have a bearing on sound. I thought it very unfortunate when NAIM decided to get into this overly precious cable business with SuperLumina, though I understand the business imperative to do so. I am firmly in the camp that is sticking with NACA5 and the stock interconnects - I have never heard a hyper-expensive interconnect make a justifiable "improvement' in sound other than oh, maybe that's a bit different, maybe it isn't over a properly selected reasonably high quality cable.
 
riginally Posted by nickpeacock:
Here on the Naim forum you will find that Naim's own-brand snake oil is almost always better than anyone else's.

 

Before slagging off AudioQuest, have you actually tried the Ethernet cables?

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Jude2012
Originally Posted by Hungryhalibut:
Originally Posted by DUPREE:
Absolutely.. It is the most wholesome and satisfying of available snake oils. 
 
In all seriousness, I think cables are the single most dishonest and seedy area of audio. The unfounded claims, ridiculous engineering premises and preposterous prices are shameful. AudioQuest is in my mind one of the larger perpetrators. They have a $10,000 Ethernet cable, despite there being no possible way this could have a bearing on sound. I thought it very unfortunate when NAIM decided to get into this overly precious cable business with SuperLumina, though I understand the business imperative to do so. I am firmly in the camp that is sticking with NACA5 and the stock interconnects - I have never heard a hyper-expensive interconnect make a justifiable "improvement' in sound other than oh, maybe that's a bit different, maybe it isn't over a properly selected reasonably high quality cable.
 
riginally Posted by nickpeacock:
Here on the Naim forum you will find that Naim's own-brand snake oil is almost always better than anyone else's.

 

Before slagging off AudioQuest, have you actually tried the Ethernet cables?

+1, and their USB cables

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by ianrobertm

Its spelled SNAIC Oil....  The only well is in Salisbury, England. 

 

In my case, I have Lavender (or Grey) interconnects, Black SNAIC's and NAC A4. I have some Grey SNAIC's too, I will certainly not be looking at Super Lumina...

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Gianluigi Mazzorana
Originally Posted by wrc:

 

So, I'm converted.  Apologies, this is probably old news to many on this forum but for me it was a revelation.

 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by badlands
Originally Posted by nickpeacock:
Here on the Naim forum you will find that Naim's own-brand snake oil is almost always better than anyone else's.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by nad3020e

On my old system i was using a well known brands £220.00 per m cable. I used this on my naim kit until a room change-around neccessitated a longer run.

I tried some naca5 & found i prefered it. The other cable seemed to me to change/colour the sound wheras the naca5 sounds like it just lets the amp & speakers do the job (if that makes sense?!).

I shall stick with the naca5.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by DUPREE
 

Before slagging off AudioQuest, have you actually tried the Ethernet cables?

 

Certainly in the analog domain, electrical characteristics of cable can impact the quality of sound - although this is often more that they are good electrical matches than perform any special magic. NACA 5 works so well with NAIM because it specifically is matched to complement the amps  

 

However, special ethernet cables are pure hocus-pocus. I have not tried their Ethernet cables. I have 20 years of experience in engineering in the High-Perfromance Computing space and have spent way too many hours on cable testing, certification as well as design of systems revolving around ethernet and using the most time precise tools and PTP calibration for metrics. These cables show such a fundamental misrepresentation and misunderstanding of how A. Ethernet and how it operates within the OSI model B. How DLNA/UPnP playback and Digital to Analog conversion happens and C. What actually happens at the Ethernet PHY layer. The actually most intellectually insulting part of these cables are the alleged directionality - DLNA uses TCP for content, definition, control and eventing, which is bi-directional by nature.  

 

I am sure you can find someone who's confirmation bias completely defy's their sense of reason to imagine something happening in a cable that short however nothing in that cable is going to make one iota of improvement in your system over a good quality, undamaged cat 6A cable - it is absolute fraud.

 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by dayjay

Don't sit on the fence Dupree, say what you mean   So no, you've not heard them then and you therefore have no idea what they sound like or if they can indeed affect the sound

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Ryder35
Originally Posted by dayjay:

Don't sit on the fence Dupree, say what you mean   So no, you've not heard them then and you therefore have no idea what they sound like or if they can indeed affect the sound

I'm with Dupree on this one. How can a digital cable affect sound or picture quality. It is just a conduit of 0s and 1s. Unless data is going missing which would not happen in a non damaged Ethernet cable I can't see it making any difference.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by JRHardee

Unless it does. After all, who would have thought that turning a cable one way instead of the other would make such a difference?

 

For me the hobby is fascinating because of all of the inconvenient facts poking their little thumbs in the eyes of beautiful theories.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by DUPREE
Originally Posted by dayjay:

Don't sit on the fence Dupree, say what you mean   So no, you've not heard them then and you therefore have no idea what they sound like or if they can indeed affect the sound

A.) They can not affect the sound - The only reason they can sell these is because of the consumer or mark does not understand how networking works, have any understanding of jitter, the PHY layer and how digital/analog conversion works. It also overlooks that you are plugging these into a cheap netgear or other switch that is the intermediary between the player and the NAS anyway which with it's noisy switch-mode power supply etc could possibly cause interference in the analog domain. 

B.) I would be glad to see the results a group, including myself do a double blind test with a couple of different Cat 6 cables and this fraud-cake and see if anyone can reliably tell any difference much less which is better. Everyone is scared of testing things double blind because there is a great desire to allow for confirmation BIAS to justify the expense of paying more. 

 

 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by dayjay

I'm pleased to see B).  I've had lots of discussion with peopple who have told me that different cables, speaker, interconnects, digital, can't affect the sound and my experience and ears, and that of friends and family, tells me that they clearly can.  I don't know if ethernet cables can impact on sound, although I see no reason why they can't carry noise etc, but until I hear myself I will avoid catagorically stating that they can't.  After all, I saw quite a few bumble bees in summer that can't poossibly fly

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by wrc

Sorry for kicking off another cable thread... as if the topic hasn't already been discussed to death on forums since the birth of the internet.

 

I must say though, when it comes to cables and digital signals I'm still firmly in the non-believer camp.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Super

What about mains cables ? Something i can't get my head around when people pay silly money for.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by hungryhalibut
Perhaps, Dupree, you should put away your principles, use your ears and try them for yourself and then you can speak with authority. Until then it's just pointless theorising. People used to insist that the Earth was flat.
Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Streamz
Originally Posted by wrc:

 

I must say though, when it comes to cables and digital signals I'm still firmly in the non-believer camp.

Well, maybe you should give it a try. After all, you discovered that you liked a cable costing 5 times as much already. 

No harm in experimenting.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by The Strat (Fender)

This thread promises much!!

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by hungryhalibut

But very likely will deliver little. A bit like sex after too much wine. 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Mike-B

It would be interesting if a double blind test could be set up, however I do admit to being an Ethernet cable sceptic. ......  Why?

1/.  I spent an evening with a friends Linn system listening to/for differences between freebie Cat5, Supra Cat7 & AQ Cinnamon;  we all heard a change from Cat5 to the others & in retrospect I suspect it was damaged in some way,  apart from speculative & maybe because of intense listening we could not reliably detect any SQ differences between Supra & AQ.   As a result of this test I bought Supra.

2/. If there was real SQ changes I would have expected the press to be busy with group testing & whatever else they do that sells magazine copy.  Apart from the obviously sponsored "tests" that AQ have done,  I suspect the rest of the press are reluctant to get involved for fear of a boring non-result.

3/. The Ethernet carries a data stream that is sent & verified as part of the communication between renderer & server & if it's incomplete it gets resent & again verified.  Then that data is stored in the renderer buffer along with the previous & following data packets.  The data (music) is played from the buffer, not from the NAS or the cable.

 

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by DUPREE
Your point 3 is critically important and hit's the nail on the head. Not only does TCP at the protocol layer ensure that all the data is delivered and delivered in order, your NAIM streamer also buffers the data and plays from the buffer. The data is either missing entirely causing the stream to stop or it is there. Also, with the advent of 10Gigabit Ethernet the specifications required to meet Cat 6A or Cat 7 is extremely high, the cross-talk, bandwidth and interference isolation approaches the limit of cable manufacture. Streaming is a relatively low bandwidth affair even when using DSD or 192bit files. There is no performance improvement that can be made above this for the transmission of 1Gig ethernet, as it is going to be error free and that is easily verifiable with a packet capture on the TCP side and using a cable tester end to end such as a Fluke DSX on the other. There is no improvement in data quality to be had. 

 

 

 

I3/. The Ethernet carries a data stream that is sent & verified as part of the communication between renderer & server & if it's incomplete it gets resent & again verified.  Then that data is stored in the renderer buffer along with the previous & following data packets.  The data (music) is played from the buffer, not from the NAS or the cable.

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by Mulberry

There is, by the way, no $10,000 Ethernet cable among AudioQuests regular offerings. The Diamond tops out at $7,998 for a 12m cable.

 

I have no doubt that the would customize a longer one that would break the $10k-mark, but please remember Naims entry-level NACA5 speaker cable starts at prices above $10,000 (for any pair above 230 feet ).

Posted on: 12 November 2015 by hungryhalibut

That's all well and good, but AQ Cinnamon still sounds better than a bog standard cable. My ears tell me this, not physics, electronics or whatever. So clearly I must be stupid, deaf, deluded, a liar, some of these, or all of them. Anyway, I'm not going to argue with someone with a closed mind, as there is just no point.