Having decided already, rightly or wrongly, to displace the Naim stock IC cables for 250DR to HCDR and nDAC to 282 I’m looking at the above two as that’s where I want to be on price. Has anyone tried both ? I’ve never done home demo’s of anything so will probably take a gamble either way, thanks
Hi Callum. I’d stick with the Naim cables if I were you. They really are very good and I found that to get any improvement I needed to go to the Morgana level.
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Do the words ‘30-day free-trial’ help with the ‘gamble’ aspect?
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Might be able to help. I have Chord Epic and signature ICs. The RCA ones that are about £400 and £800 for a 1M pair.
I also have Morgana ICs too.
Both Chords were a major uplift for me. Clearly the £800 are better but not double.
I then bought a pair of Morgana ICs in din to go from my ndx2 to 282. They never came off. Easily as good as the signatures.
Now all my ICs are Morgana. Great VFM.
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In my olive system with a set of WH standard ICs, I found that the DIN-XLR (SNAXO->250s) were significantly better than stock.
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We need to be careful on this forum. Given Naim’s stance on cabling, Richard will have to edit us if we say anything positive about some cables. I believe that there is no issue if we stick to signal-only interconnects.
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There is a clear problem about discussing non-Naim SNAIC’s.
Thats not something which plays well, with the Powers… 
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One reason why i did not mention the Morganas that come out of my 282 to one of my hcs, then from my hc to my MF nu vista 300 power amp. Other hc is fully compliant with a snaic providing power only.
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The Chord Epic Din cables I had (source) and Din to XLR (when I had a 250) were excellent, a major uplift on the stock Naim cables imho. I have recently replaced these with Chord Signature and there has been another nice uplift, but nothing like the difference between stock and Epic. By that logic I’d say the Epic cables are the better VFM of the two Chords and are definitely worth a try.
I have just picked up a Morgana (source) in order to try it out but I’ve only managed to have a quick blast of it so far so am reserving judgement for now.
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Nick, it’s forum rules; 3rd party or fake “SNAICs” and Burndy cables are deemed unauthorised modifications to Naim equipment (they carry DC voltage between circuitry in the boxes) - at best, they won’t allow the equipment to perform as Naim intended, and at worst they could damage the Naim equipment; on that issue there are some potentially serious warranty implication with their use. Hence their discussion is not permitted here.
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I’d no idea this is a controversial topic
It isn’t controversial at all provided it’s just about interconnects.
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It always surprises me when people decide to use non-Naim cables with their Naim kit. Why? Because it seems to me that Naim have gone to the trouble of producing their own cabling at a choice of price points that they feel gets the intended performance from their equipment. Now that’s not to say that there are not superior cables on the market to the Naim offerings but that the ones offered by Naim are the best in terms of allowing their equipment to perform optimally.
This is the point. Other cables may offer more detail, more tonal accuracy, deeper bass, more extended or smoother treble, more this or more that etc. etc. But do they offer an all-round musical improvement? Do they make your Naim system better able to communicate the emotion of the music? Do they make the music more enjoyable?
I’m not saying that no cables other than Naim cables are capable of doing this. But it is a perilous journey to find such a cable, and one that doesn’t improve say tonality but which in the long run makes music slightly less engaging. The thing is that such things may not become apparent until many weeks or even months down the line. You may suddenly feel yourself slightly less inclined to listen to music. By then of course it’s too late.
I like the simple life. I always stuck with Naim cables. I was always sure that my equipment sounded exactly as Naim intended it to. To me the fact that all the hassle of having to select suitable cables was removed was always a huge plus point with Naim.
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Problem with that is Naim have no idea which speaker you have, which room you are in or your personal preferences of what great sound is. Either you let Naim decide this for you or you decide this yourself. I know what I chose.
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Unfortunately Naim has never designed my speakers, so I have been an infidel from the beginning of my Naim journey. This has cost me a lot of money and who knows what I have been ruining along the way?
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I have owned chord epic x speaker cables for a few days and I found them superior to the qed xt40i, tellurium qblack 2 and the same naca 5. I recommend the purchase. My love supernait 3 with spendor d7.2.
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Fair enough. I am a great believer in the synergistic approach to system building. Where everything pulls in the same direction to create a whole greater than the sum of the parts. If you want to use cables as tone controls or filters to tune a system then that’s another matter altogether. Personally I would make sure I chose perfectly matched equipment in the first place rather than trying to tune out any undesirables using cables.
Correction: Simply, the answer to your questions in the second para is “Yes”.
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Naim didn’t design your house or listening room either. So what?