After a week with the KS1 in my system, I have reached to the conclusion that it is not my cup of tea, as much as I like it. Yes it was a short period and the lead is not broken in entirely, but so far more or less I can judge how the overall character of my kit is about to change and I kind of don’t want to go in that direction.
This cable is such an improvement over NACA5 (in certain aspects) that from the very first minutes I installed it, I knew it was a special one, it does almost everything better than the Naim cable, with one exception - it lacks body, fullness, warmth. It is very detailed, very good midrange and vocals, very refined, open and clear with absolutely no harshness, but one thing that is missing is the bottom end, bass is tight and articulate, but that lower end grunt of the NACA5 is missing. It is kind of analytical, it lacks emotion - during the week I have mostly listened to music I know very well and I was hearing details I haven’t heard previously, but I was just standing and staring, I was not involved nor engaged with the music, just standing still.
This specific character will probably not be so obvious with bigger floorstanding speakers, as by design they go lower than my ProAc standmounts, but anyhow, with my speaker it is very lean sounding and the music is just a sound with no real emotion to it. One strange thing I noticed is when I was moving in front of the speaker, there were spots where if was on the left hand side or near the left speaker in one particular position, the sound from right one suddenly dissapeared, and same on the right side with the left speaker, looks as if I had to rearrange or change the toe in angle so it suits the new cable, the ribbon tweeter is known to be kind of directional, but with the Naim cable I haven’t experienced such thing before.
At some point I might try the Phantoms, out of curiosity, which was exactly the case and with the Kudos cable, in general I am completely satisfied with the NACA5, but it was worth the try and at least I know how it compares to alternative cables.
My SHL5 Plus was rather thin in the bass compared to the Tannoy I have now. And I can completely understand why naca5 match Harbeth better than for example my Tannoy which already have more warmth and scale in the low/mid frequencies.
