Uniti Atom: first use...and first issues as well

It could be a speaker cable/plug issue.  The newer kit is more tolerant than of old but supposedly still works best with the Naim speaker connectors and Naim's recommended low  capacitance & moderate inductance NACA5 cable run at a minimum of 3.5m per channel.  In my experience, deviating from this could possibly make the amp run hotter than normal. Is the Emotiva XSS cable extreme in some spec or other?  Are the cables very short &/or very capacitive?

Maybe worth checking this with your dealer or with Naim just in case.

Hey Richard,

I actually have very little information about the technical details, there's no info about capacitance or other. But the cable are 2 meters on each channel and here are the only details available on Emotiva's website:

Solid brass machined ends with 3 micron thick gold plating.

Dual-twisted, 10 gauge, high strand count oxygen-free copper conductors

Strand Count: 455 x 2

Interchangeable tips: banana plugs or spades (4 of each included with every cable).

Diecast, non-ferrous metal alloy breakout collar for added support.

Nylon braided anti-scuff jacket over PVC outer insulator

Naim unit shuts down for no apparent reason, but is OK is powered down and then repowered. The Naim unit has  thermal cut out protection.

User has short (2 metre), non-Naim speaker leads, of unknown characteristics, but of twisted construction (??).

Sorry, but this seems a bit obvious to me. I guess the cost of these leads (and cost of others) may be a disincentive to try something else....?  

Bouba, thanks.  It doesn't sound that promising so far - particularly the gold plated brass ends! Do they provide any specs - i.e. values per metre for Capacitance, Inductance, and Resistance?

@Richard: the cable are the same as the one pictured below; mine are 2.5m long. There is no information at all available on the website of the manufacturer. the thing is I've been using those for 5 years now with different system including a NAP100 and UQ2 with no issue at all. I'm not a cable freak.

@Ianrobert: I know on this very forum a lot of people who are non-naim cables with great success, along with naim kits. So sorry but I don't understand what the cost or manufacturer have to do with the issue I have, as long as they're not from an obscure, completely unknown manufacturer who does not respect the basic industry's standard.

Emotiva is a well known company, they're rather serious actually, and I've been using their products for some years now with no issue at all.

As regarding the cable length I'm not knwoledgeable enough to tell whether that's the culprit or not. But I'm pretty sure the cable is of good quality if not of very high standard.

whether it's the right cable to use with the Atom, I can't say, hence my question.

Funnily enough, I listened to music for hours yesterday, with no sound problem at all, things were Crystal clear and sounded really good, with none of the problems I decribed above.

I wonder why the hdmi interface was “simply thrown in the box”

jon honeyball posted:

I wonder why the hdmi interface was “simply thrown in the box”

If you really are curious on this, then you could read the OP's original thread. Although I would doubt if anything was "thrown" here. According to Naim, the HDMI board was to be fitted by the distributor or dealer before installation...

You're right Richard, apparently, Focal simply did not warn the dealers about this, my own dealer who offers stellar service and know very well naim kits confirmed he did not know about that. He was quite surprised when I told him that the card was not fitted in the unit.

If you're concerned about a possible speaker cable mismatch, your dealer should be able to lend you some Naim cable, or possibly something else which is known to be of compatible spec. to try in your system. In your position, I'd want to get to the bottom of the problem, rather than leaving it unresolved, especially with an overheating issue. 

Bouba posted:

@Ianrobert: I know on this very forum a lot of people who are non-naim cables with great success, along with naim kits. So sorry but I don't understand what the cost or manufacturer have to do with the issue I have, as long as they're not from an obscure, completely unknown manufacturer who does not respect the basic industry's standard.

@Bouba - My point was that cables cost - they cost you, you are 'invested' in them. I am assuming here that they are not cheap....?  They are however, unknown to me, and respecting 'basic standards' (whatever they are) may not help you in matching with a Naim amp. 

Naim NACA5 cable is/was £32 per metre, according to the Jan17 Naim UK Price list. So it also represents a significant cost (in my view - YMMV) - £224 for a 2 by 3.5 metre set - the usual Naim recommended minimum - or £512 for the 2 by 8 metres that I have. But - if you are spending 1000's of your currency units, I question the logic of using anything else (YMMV, clearly) - other than know 'similar' cables often mentioned here. 

I am with [@mention:36201736949470193] above - borrow some Naim cable from your dealer - and try.

No dealer around me have the NAC A5 in store right now.

I'm considering some Tellurium Q Blue or Ultra Blue, will see (or rather hear) if that makes a difference.

The amp shutting down due to overheating caused by the inductance / capacitance of the cable strikes me as unlikely. I would suspect a fault in the unit before throwing money away on Naim's own brand of cable. How hard are you driving the speakers? What is the ambient room temperature and does the unit have plenty of breathing room? If none of these are problematic I would send it back to have it checked out.

Ltaylor, none of the above is problematic. and I don't think that the unit is faulty either; I tried several things yesterday, and the amp behaves normally and is perfectly driving the speakers. I'm not buying the cables inductance/capacitance problem either. I'm now suspecting the cable rigidity and weight actually as both have a ferrite at each end; adding even more weight to it. And as far as I recall i think that the unit's binding post are "floating" and not solidly fixed to the chassis; so the overall weight of the cables might well be the cause of some bad connections with the naim's binding posts.

Yesterday I tried some very simple but high quality spare cables I had at home and have no issue at all. I'll leave those for the time being but I think cabling was the problem: they're just to weighty and rigid; and I do intend to replace them with a pair of Tellurium Q.

Will keep you posted about my findings, just order a new pair of cables and they shall be with me next week.

ianrobertm posted:

Bouba posted:

@Ianrobert: I know on this very forum a lot of people who are non-naim cables with great success, along with naim kits. So sorry but I don't understand what the cost or manufacturer have to do with the issue I have, as long as they're not from an obscure, completely unknown manufacturer who does not respect the basic industry's standard.

@Bouba - My point was that cables cost - they cost you, you are 'invested' in them. I am assuming here that they are not cheap....?  They are however, unknown to me, and respecting 'basic standards' (whatever they are) may not help you in matching with a Naim amp. 

Naim NACA5 cable is/was £32 per metre, according to the Jan17 Naim UK Price list. So it also represents a significant cost (in my view - YMMV) - £224 for a 2 by 3.5 metre set - the usual Naim recommended minimum - or £512 for the 2 by 8 metres that I have. But - if you are spending 1000's of your currency units, I question the logic of using anything else (YMMV, clearly) - other than know 'similar' cables often mentioned here. 

I am with [@mention:36201736949470193] above - borrow some Naim cable from your dealer - and try.

Having looked up YMMV in the Urban Dictionary I'm barely any the wiser! Sorry, but obscure acronyms make reading hard work (IMHO, obviously!!)

ltaylor posted:

The amp shutting down due to overheating caused by the inductance / capacitance of the cable strikes me as unlikely. I would suspect a fault in the unit before throwing money away on Naim's own brand of cable. How hard are you driving the speakers? What is the ambient room temperature and does the unit have plenty of breathing room? If none of these are problematic I would send it back to have it checked out.

I agree  ,yes there are some queer loading of some cables .   but normal speaker cables are really very similar.  the largest  loading is the speaker itself .  . if cables are a problem then surely naim should give a list of cables best to use.... my guess that new customers of the new range will not purchase expensive cables /£30 plus and may not even know of the vast range available 

I changed my pairs of cable for the very same (i had a spared pairs left in stock as I used to bi-amp my speakers) and the problems did not occur for several days now. So I strongly suspect a faulty pair of cables now. don't ask me what happened as the outer shell of the cables is immaculate and plus, it's the exact same cable with same construction. I did not do anything special to them once connected to my previous speakers.

Anyway, no warning message from the amp since I swapped both runs of cables. I intend to change the cables for lighter ones from Tellerium as soon as those get delivered, just in case. Strange!

Just a quick question to all regarding my volume issue : I find the speakers output posts to be surprinsly loose on my Atom. Is that the case on all units or there maybe Something really wrong with mine ? Richard, if you're around, any thought ?

Sorry Bouba, I'm not sure what you are referring to; the Uniti Atom uses 4mm sockets.  Can you clarify?

Hi Richard,

I referred to the speakers sockets on the Atom itself, as regarding the issue described above; what I meant is that the Atom's speakers sockets are a little bit loose, they actually "move" quite easily, and I was wondering whether that could be the source of the issue I experienced.

it happened that yesterday, the same problem occurs again, so I call my dealer once again, to check with him what could be the problem, he told me he would be checking the demo Unit they have in store and advise me about what to do. I think I'm better sending back the unit once again to make really sure there's Nothing abnormal with the Atom's speakers socket.

I really carefully examined my speakers cables and there's Nothing wrong with them and seems to work just fine with my UQ2. But I experienced exactly the same issue described above and while unplugging the cables from the Atom's speakers posts I found that the right speakers post seemed lightly more loose than the left one. Hence my question: is that on purpose and are the speakers sockets supposed to be a little bit loose or shall they be really "fixed" and not moving at all?

Bouba, I'm not sure.  On the old NAITs and NAP90 the sockets were fixed and mounted on the PCB.  This mean't you had to use the Naim speaker connectors, otherwise, use of other banana plugs, particularly heavy ones with heavy cables could cause stress damage and create a dry solder joint.  I'm wondering now whether this has happened here (I assume that the sockets are similarly PCB mounted).  Only way to be sure is to check.  In the meantime, I'll run this past Naim's service dept for their thoughts.

Bouba, I've heard back from Steve Hopkins at the factory and he has asked that you to contact your dealer.

Many thanks Richard, this is what I've just done. I'll return the unit to my Dealer for them to check whether everything's is fine within the Atom; i'll be reassured to know then if it's just a cable issue and not Something else.

Timmo, I'm guessing wildly here, but I think the acronym was meant to be YVMV - which would mean (especially in this context) your view might vary.

Whistling in the dark is a talent of mine........

YMMV is a piece of Internet slang, based on the phrase Your Mileage May Vary. I think that is a sticker that used to come on cars telling the owners they may not get the predicted mileage frpm the car. It's become Internet shorthand for "you may see it differently".

Thanks, Eoink.

Well, I was close (ish....)