I have just purchased a Uniti Atom, which should show up later this week.
I plan to use some old NACA4 speaker cable I have around. Does the Atom have the minimum 3m limitation of classic series amps, or can I go somewhat shorter? This will be for a near-field office system and I would like to keep cable length to a minimum.
Also, I vaguely recall that on the NACA4, the little Naim logos printed on the web should go to the speaker side, but there was a thread that suggested the direction of the printing goes towards the speaker, which is opposite. That thread is closed and didnāt really settle it. Which is it? I believe itās the former. Do you know @Richard.Dane?
I recall someone saying on here not so long ago that an old US NAIT manual recommended that the logo circles should be closest to the speaker end. But I canāt recall for sure. I should have an old US NAIT manual somewhere in my files. Iāll check it out and let you know if I find it.
@Richard.Dane, after a little bit of searching I found my old Naim manual.
If you look at the end of the penultimate paragraph it does say indeed that the Naim logos go to the speaker end. @anon56221831, you might be interested, to note this for future reference.
Iām happy with the convenience and tidiness of shorter cables, for a slight sacrifice in SQ. This is going in a home office system. Iāll use it to play music and radio from Roon while I work, but not generally focused on any serious listening. The Atom is really overkill, but I got a great deal on it, and I can repurpose it for a better use when I retire in a few years, at which point I can revisit speakers cables.
Yeah, I never got rid of mine. Always seem to have some use for them. Now I also have a 7m pair of black NACA5 sitting on the floor of a closet, but I donāt think Iāll cut them down if I donāt need to. They might come in handy if I move the Atom elsewhere.
I am struggling to understand how speaker cable can be directional. I am not trying to start an argument - just looking for a scientific explanation for why a wire would respond differently to current flow in different directions?
Date: April 17, 1999 05:33 AM
Author: julian vereker
Subject: direction
Here follows a cut & paste from an earlier post of mine. "I canāt tell
you why cables sound different one way round to the other, but I do
know when the ādirectionalityā happens in manufacture.
It doesnāt seem to matter how the bundle (of copper) is drawn, single
direction or mixed direction, but as soon as the insulation is
extruded onto the bundle, the directionality is established. This
means that one can mark the insulation and it will always be the right
way round.
I suspect that the hot plastic insulation anneals the copper in some
way, and this affects the crystaline structure.
But all our attempts, over many years, have failed to find any
measurement to show the directionality or indeed whether one cable
will sound better than another (other than the obvious - resistance,
capacitance and inductance)
Maybe someone out there knows?"
I am not sure about being an ex Physicist, I would have thought āOnce
a Physicist always a Physicistā. However one thing that is often
missed by the āprofesionalsā is that audio electronics design is the
most difficult discipline of all - one has to design for 10 octaves
and 130dB at the same time - a huge envelope, and much larger than any
other area of electronics endeavor.
However was it āfineā for technical reasons,.or for soundquality reasonsā¦??