Do I really have to buy new speaker cables?

I have never understood why some people feel that it is inadvisable to have their hi-fi rack placed between their speakers. I am not convinced that this adversely affects the sound. I have my hi-fi rack located between the speakers in my main system & am perfectly happy with it this way. 

My advice would be to locate your rack between the speakers and save yourself some money, although no doubt some people will advise otherwise. Maybe it's a 'Naim' thing.

My rack is between my speakers and don’t hear any negative affects. 

In a perfect world with unlimited resources we could possibly reach nirvana......

......in my world with a house built in 1911 and limited number of quality electrical outlets, the placement of the rack needed to be between the speakers.

Do not know if it is better or worse than the rack being located elsewhere, just know that I enjoy the music! 

Agree with HMACK and Finkfan, safe yourself some money and enjoy the music 

If your dealer loves you, maybe they will take your old wires in trade at par, especially to close a deal on a black box.  Never hurts to ask!

Whether anyone can hear the difference if cables are different lengths is a separate question — I cannot attest from experience.  I’ll bet I could not. 

I used to run my system between the speakers, but no longer do, for practical reasons.  I think maybe sound is a bit better with no furniture of any kind directly between them; but a plush bench on a rug between me and them is good.

Every room is a new adventure.

Nick

Within 1.5m of each other should be fine. Any more discrepancy and the lengths should be matched.

Your speakers at 210 cm apart is quite a distance from each other. What is that distance to your hot seat ?

my speakers are 140 cm apart with 200 cm to hot seat.   Maybe 210 minus 075 = 135 cm apart isn't that bad if you have a similar hot spot distance

Don’t sweat the small stuff Meerkat. 1) Replace the short cable by the longer one that you need if you really want to stick to Tellurium. A 75cm longer cable on one side, while non ideal, won’t really affect balance, image or load. 2) Assuming that you have a full Naim amplification, sell or trade in the Black for a 5m pair of NACA5. You really can’t go wrong there. ????

Chag -

I was fortunate to learn very early on the importance of NOT placing the rack between the speakers. A dealer challenged me to move my rack from between the speakers and loaned me the required length of cable to get my rack on the rear wall. Identical gear, only the speaker cable length and rack location changed. Despite my skepticism, there was a noticeable enough improvement with Naim XS level gear to get me to spend for the significantly longer NACA5 runs (3-m vs 8.5-m). 

joerand posted:

I was fortunate to learn very early on the importance of NOT placing the rack between the speakers. A dealer challenged me to move my rack from between the speakers and loaned me the required length of cable to get my rack on the rear wall. Identical gear, only the speaker cable length and rack location changed. Despite my skepticism, there was a noticeable enough improvement with Naim XS level gear to get me to spend for the significantly longer NACA5 runs (3-m vs 8.5-m). 

Cheers...If I'm going to be giving him in excess of 10K, then I will be asking him to throw in some NACA5 as goodwill gesture

Chag... posted:

Don’t sweat the small stuff Meerkat. 1) Replace the short cable by the longer one that you need if you really want to stick to Tellurium. A 75cm longer cable on one side, while non ideal, won’t really affect balance, image or load. 2) Assuming that you have a full Naim amplification, sell or trade in the Black for a 5m pair of NACA5. You really can’t go wrong there. ????

Chag -

Strangely enough Chag, I have never demoed NACA5. I was advised that Tellurium was the mutts nuts. Perhaps this is an ideal opportunity to demo it.???? 

TOBYJUG posted:

Your speakers at 210 cm apart is quite a distance from each other. What is that distance to your hot seat ?

my speakers are 140 cm apart with 200 cm to hot seat.   Maybe 210 minus 075 = 135 cm apart isn't that bad if you have a similar hot spot distance

An interesting thought TOBYJUG...I have been looking at hundreds of Naim 'System Pics', as I feel one can get some very good ideas about system set up. It does appear that some folks do have their speakers only about 1.5 metres from each other, (About the width of a fireplace). It is of course something that is personal to the listener, but I thought the norm was between 2 - 3 metres.

My hot seat is 2.5 metres away. I could move the speakers slightly to the left, closer to the rack, but then they'd be off centre to the hot seat, and also the left speaker would be tight to the left hand wall. which isn't good either!  

Meerkat, at the very least demo NACA5 if available. Should you decide to stick to Tellurium, I wouldn't rule out splicing. Get the additional length of Tellurium needed to keep your gear from between the speakers and splice it into your existing runs. That remedy may open up numerous audio nervosa issues for some, but done properly splicing is a viable solution.

Unfortunately you can’t ‘splice’ TQ cables due to their makeup. You can however replace just one length. You don’t have to buy anything in pairs. 

joerand posted:

Meerkat, at the very least demo NACA5 if available. 

When I demo the NDX 2, I will definitely listen to the NACA5????

Finkfan posted:

Unfortunately you can’t ‘splice’ TQ cables due to their makeup. You can however replace just one length. You don’t have to buy anything in pairs. 

Interesting, why?

Surely they are solderable...
Cut back the web between the cables and slide on lengths of heatshrink, then strip the wire and slightly flatten out the strands to get a more direct contact between the strands of the wire on each end of the joint.  Solder them together then position and shrink the heatshrink.
Won't that work?

The tellurium copper also has a coating on it. You can find a few pictures online. Apparently this must be removed from the strands before they can be soldered. I have spoken to a couple of guys how make up the cables and they said it’s tricky to do and not a DIY job.

Huge posted:

Finkfan posted:

Unfortunately you can’t ‘splice’ TQ cables due to their makeup. You can however replace just one length. You don’t have to buy anything in pairs. 

Interesting, why?

Surely they are solderable...
Cut back the web between the cables and slide on lengths of heatshrink, then strip the wire and slightly flatten out the strands to get a more direct contact between the strands of the wire on each end of the joint.  Solder them together then position and shrink the heatshrink.
Won't that work?

Long time no see Huge! Never did suss out those dome nuts for my old ND5!

I though joining quality cables was sacrilege?????

The funny thing most Naim amps sound better with longer speaker wire.

Say going from 3m to 6-8m should bring a worthwhile improvement along with moving a rack to aside.

Another great vfm speaker wire to consider is the new Phantom from Witchhat, a former Naim engineer. 

Meerkat posted:

Huge posted:

Finkfan posted:

Unfortunately you can’t ‘splice’ TQ cables due to their makeup. You can however replace just one length. You don’t have to buy anything in pairs. 

Interesting, why?

Surely they are solderable...
Cut back the web between the cables and slide on lengths of heatshrink, then strip the wire and slightly flatten out the strands to get a more direct contact between the strands of the wire on each end of the joint.  Solder them together then position and shrink the heatshrink.
Won't that work?

Long time no see Huge! Never did suss out those dome nuts for my old ND5!

I though joining quality cables was sacrilege?????

It's not ideal, but done properly there's very little degradation of SQ.

"have never understood why some people feel that it is inadvisable to have their hi-fi rack placed between their speakers. I am not convinced that this adversely affects the sound. "

Try this: put on your favourite piece of demo music and set the volume level. 

Listen. 

Get a blanket or duvet, cover up the stack.

Listen again. 

My own space is constricted so the opportunity to stack the boxes elsewhere was non-existent.

My solution was to buy an extra floor shelf (Isoblue) and split the stack in two. This gave me three levels sitting below the level of the speaker cones and removed the interference effect.

The drawback was the messy cabling. I ended up separating the info cables  (2 Chord Shawlines and 1 Chameleon) from the power cables by wrapping them in bubble wrap...

Finkfan posted:

The tellurium copper also has a coating on it. You can find a few pictures online. Apparently this must be removed from the strands before they can be soldered. I have spoken to a couple of guys how make up the cables and they said it’s tricky to do and not a DIY job.

Interesting.

I've not been able to find any pictures as yet.  I have found reference to use of a high temperature solder (very odd as that increases the problems of oxidation during the soldering process), but they may just mean SN90.3 Ag9 Cu0.7 or similar solder.

I also never understood the use of Te-Cu in wires, given that it has substantially lower conductivity than pure copper and the only advantage that alloy has is machineability (the metal crystals have breaking planes giving better chip formation on machining).

Mike1951 posted:

...  I ended up separating the info cables  (2 Chord Shawlines and 1 Chameleon) from the power cables by wrapping them in bubble wrap...

Oooh, I like that idea!

I have no idea how or why the TQ cables do what they do....but I like it 

i prefer to have empty space between my speakers, it is easier for me to imagine the players on the scene.   The speakers can also breathe better, the sound is more free( for my point of view of course).   The third aspect, from what i often read, it is better to have more than 4 meters cables with naim amps( i don’t know if it is true).