I have the QED Supremus cables and been using them since couple days now. Better in terms of resoution and soundstage compared to NACA5… But I am not sure the specs are within safe margin for the Nova. I don’t notice major heat issues versus the NACA5s, just maybe small difference ( warmer ) but then the weather been hot these days so could be due to the temperature change in the room as well. Specs are below for this cable, any comments will be appreciated.
I use Chord Odyssey on my Supernait that has similar middle of the road spec with L at 0.6uH/m & C at 56pF/m
Add to that the Nova has an early roll off …. (per Stereophile) ‘… down 2dB at 20kHz, & drops off very rapidly above 20kHz.’)
I therefore suspect it will not be close capacitive reactance which typically comes in higher than 50kHz & be able accept most cables without problems.
My Nova overheated with Audio Quest Type 5 cables, but they don’t publish specs so that is no help. I switched to NAC A5 and the sound and imaging improved. I have the Powerline bought and coming soon also. Did you do a blind test?
Whilst I can’t be certain, that doesn’t look too outlandish, and the Nova (like the other Unitis and integrateds) is more tolerant of cable specifications; so, like @Mike-B I think it’s likely to be fine.
Did not need blind test. I already had the Supremus before I got the Nova but didn’t consider trying till recently. I didn’t use them much with my previous equipment either as the bass was stronger and little softer compared to my other cables, so they always stayed in their boxes. But surprisingly with the Nova I don’t have the same pronounced bass and the moment I plugged them it was easily noticeable that the soundstage became larger compared to NACA5 and they are a little more transparent with sweeter highs.
I’ve been using 3m of the QED Supremus cables with a Nova/Q Acoustics Concept 500 for over 3 years. I’ve never had any problems with the Nova overheating.
However, unless the amp has an output inductor, which I don’t believe Naim do… results will also depend on the connected speakers and even speaker cable routing.
NAC-A5
16pF per metre capacitance
1uH per metre inductance
I believe Naim recommend 3.5 m of NACA5 for stability safety across most speaker types, which would appear to provide a composite of 3.5uH series inductance.
For total safety across most speaker types that is would I be looking at with Naim Classic amps with other cables.
There is also the consideration of resistance and capacitance… where the higher the capacitance of the cable I believe the higher the resistance of the cable you want to dampen transient ringing /overshoot (artificially brighten the sound)… but I think for most standard cables this possibly can be ignored.
We hear the new amps are more tolerant of speaker cable inductance considerations, but I don’t believe we know the design parameters Naim use on their non Classic amps.
However if we refer to D Self’s excellent engineering texts on audio amplifier design he states the output inductor should typically be between 1 and 7uH for stability into 4 ohm loads, and less for 2 ohm loads…. The upper limit is determined by minimum roll off into the audio band… which possibly supports the 7 or 8 metres of NACA5 being the preferred max length.
Now I know a composite series inductance over a cable length, is not the same as a point output inductance, but unless anyone can say otherwise from an an engineering perspective, it feels a plausible equivalence to make.
So if using a Naim Classic amp, the OP’s cable I would suggest a minimum of 7 metres for max safety across most speaker types… but the capacitance is different from NACA5 - by a factor of 6 compared to per length inductance… so possibly other SQ considerations.
I don’t know how to upload pictures from an IPad on this topic.But you can google,Naim and Audioquest speaker cable Lexicom multi media.It’s in Dutch but there’s also a picture.
Important warning when using AudioQuest speaker cables on Naim amplifiers
In a short period of time we have received a number of reports of NAIM products becoming too hot or humming or a combination of both.
We were able to trace the cause of this back to the use of certain types of AudioQuest speaker cables. The widely used Rocket 33, 44 etc. in the standard configuration do not work well with NAIM amplifiers.
NAIM amplifiers are made to work with NACA 5 loudspeaker cabling, which is what the power amplifiers in NAIM equipment are designed for. Therefore, always ask for the Naim variant when ordering Audioquest speaker cables.
