It’s one of the big advantages of the cable used and the use of DINs that two separate ground runs can be avoided.
JV’s explanation can be found in the FAQ (why Naim use DINs);
Furthermore, the system ground (which should be a stable connection point to which all signals and power supplies are referenced) is absolutely critical to the sonic performance of your hi-fi. A single reference ground point is important so that signal details are not lost in the small, yet significant voltage differences inevitable with separated ground paths.
Many manufacturers point to the great trouble they take to “star ground” everything. Sadly, this is all wasted when you connect your system together with RCA-plugged cables. Why?
When you connect, for instance, a CD player to a preamp with RCA-plugged cable, you automatically have two separate ground wires - the left and right shields going between them. This creates a ground loop, which degrades the musical performance dramatically, and negates any efforts that were taken to ground the internal circuits properly.
If you were to connect these same two components together with DIN-plugged Naim interconnects, you would have only ONE cable with only ONE ground shield surrounding both the left and right signal wires. Hence, only one ground path for each connection and no ground loop.
"I can’t tell you why cables sound different one way round to the other, but I do know when the ‘directionality’ happens in manufacture.
It doesn’t 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)
Yes, and no. There’s still benefit to using just the one DIN by virtue of the DIN connection itself. My own listening tests that I conducted years ago at the factory, listening to the same type of cable but in RCA-RCA vs. RCA-DIN/DIN-RCA bears this out.
Thank you but is the din to rca made up of just one lavender? If so where and how is the shield connected to the rca? Is it split and connected to both rcas or is it connected to one of the rcas?
@Richard.Dane I just realized I have one here and noted the screen has been split up and led through a heat shrunk tube in parallel with each conductor
The one thing i have never understood with copper cables and direction is, when copper is made it is heated up. This makes all the atoms in the copper face the same way.
This i get and understand could make it sound better one way to the other.
But they shift again over time and end up all different. That’s why copper pipe is much easier to bend when new compared to bending it a few years later.
So with that above does it mean that wires only have a short life span sounding good ?
You have to once again heat it up to red hot to get all the atoms facing the same way
Naim use DIN audio setup where the return is made common between channels which subtly improves stereo imaging performance in addition to possibly other aspects over having two separate returns. This is one of the advantages of using DIN over RCA/phono. If one end is RCA/phono then the common return is split for the two leads to the RCA/phono connectors.
So called directionality can be attributed to many things, from which end any shield is grounded to the direction through which the alloy is pulled when it is being constructed… which in turn is said to produce a very slightly different response to audio frequency signals.
In a way, but it is for shielding between the two signal conductors: separate shields rather than a common one is to reduce crosstalk between the two channels. How significant crosstalk may be, likely depends on cable length and signal strength.
So is the cable making and adding the extruded sheath all done in a single process? If you are making say a coax lead, how does that work where the two smaller cables are made, then the ground added, and then the outer sheath? I imagine the smaller cables are made first, stored, and then put through a second or third process. As you can tell, it’s not something I’ve really thought about before!
Just before it closed, I went to the old Pirelli factory in Southampton. It used to make submarine cables (to go underwater, not in the boat) in one run, reeled straight onto the ship.
Obviously, it had little to do with hi-fi cables, but it was impressive.
Naim used to use Pirelli cable for their mains leads ( look for the Pirelli marking on the outer sheath) - still excellent all these years later. Somewhere I still have a 4 or 5 metres for making up custom length leads.
I’m using just lavenders in my system - one DIN 5/180 - DIN 5/180, one DIN 4/240 to DIN 5/180, one 2xRCA to DIN 5/180, one 2xRCA to 2xRCA. They were assembled by an authorized technician bar the first, a standard one. They all sound perfect to me…
I have a Hiline that is significantly better than my Lavenders and an rca to din Lavender from riaa. Then of course burndies and snaics all Naim original.
One of the more fun cables is the din 4 to xlr for the 250. It’s a simple looking power cord that Naim has chosen and in my system it is very good! It shows all changes in cables and tweaks in the system and the system sound sublime.
