If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. You get both left, right and even tape out in a single 5 pin DIN and a unified earth. Why on earth would you want to do that with multiple cables unless you had to?
XLR is very much like bi-wire terminals on easy to drive speakers - a bit of a fad, nothing more. XLR might be a big step up from RCA since XLR, like DIN, is at least designed for audio where RCA wasn’t. But using XLR in place of DIN makes very little sense unless you subscribe to the power amp on the floir next to a speaker topology. And in that case, Naim in general just probably isn’t for you.
Quite simply over short distances balanced connections provide a noiser electronic connection coupling than unbalanced.
You use unbalanced when you can, but if the connection lead is over a longer distance, say more than a metre, then balanced can start to introduce benefits such as cancelling induced noise.
However short leads and unbalanced is top for SQ.
Remember balanced introduces nearly twice the distortion and electronics noise than its equivalent unbalanced
XLR connectors are now the de facto choice and are universally available, which is not the case with DIN connectors, especially when needing high quality connectors. XLR connectors appear to be far more robust than DIN connectors. And I note that Naim provide XLR connectors on their NAP 500DR amp. I doubt if they would do so if they were inferior.
Peter
re. “robust” connectors, it’s something of an irony that while the XLRs used in studios look nice and rugged and promise much, they’re rugged mainly because they have to be to survive in a studio environment where they are plugged in and out often many times each day, dragged across floors, trapped under heavy equipment etc… Naim found that they actually sound better if you stripped away all the heavy metal around the plug body and so created their own lightweight, low mass plastic XLR plug.
I’m presuming that it’s not the DIN connections themselves that are the issue for you but the lack of aftermarket cables - most support RCA or XLR connections rather than DIN ?
Yes, that is a large part of my gripe.
Since DIN is a German standard, you would have thought that at least WBT, a German company who make high quality aftermarket connectors, would make DIN connectors but that does not seem to be the case.
There is also the point that DIN connectors seem to be flimsy.
Peter
The older plastic DIN plugs and sockets i remember from 70’s Hi-Fi weren’t the best but the Preh manufactured connectors with the metal shells are high quality, have locking collars for connection security and are perfect for the application they are used for here. The main problem comes with trying to use DIN plugs with more ‘esoteric’ cables. They are often too thick to fit properly into the connector body and end up needing to ditch the built in strain relief for a different solution.
And I thought that this discussion was going so well, but there is always someone who decides to make it personal. Thank you everyone for your contributions, but I think it is now time for me to withdraw.
Peter
“seem” being the operative word here. I’ve never known the business end of a DIN connection to break. I have known RCA plugs to come apart many times. Several high end components with very tight RCA simply pulled the centre pin out of the cable.
With DIN, the wires are encased in unified plug that is not part of the cable itself. With RCA, the plug is coupled to the cable return. Mechanically DIN is very sound. As is XLR but it’s already been established here that for short runs, unbalanced DIN should outperform XLR.
As for after market cables, how many brands are you really in need of? You’ve got Naim, Witchat, Chord, Atlas and a few others. Do you want to be able to swap around cables that much?
Generally speaking, the fundamental superiority of the electrical connection outweighs the benefits of cable type.
But here’s the thing… Naim do use RCA on modern gear. If you don’t like DIN, use the RCA outputs on a Naim source and the RCA inputs on the Naim preamps. Naim haven’t forced DIN on anyone in nearly 20 years. We use it because it’s superior. But you can absolutely choose from hundreds of fancy interconnects and go the RCA route.
Far from it, one of the reasons why MIDI uses DIN for its connectors as it is robust. Electronic musical instruments, sequencers etc tend to get a fair bit of abuse… far more so than Hi-Fi I would say.
Unlucky, the chance of the similar thing happening with DIN is technically higher, but very very remote. They are both robust connectors.
BTW if you are minded to it’s probably not too hard to have repaired.
I’ve never had any cable break… cheap/less cheap/old/new/din/rca etc. I am also not very rough with them… they are either sitting in a drawer, or attached to a system and maybe moved around once In a couple of years. Suspect those that are swapped in and out more frequently have greater need for robustness (pro music XLR cabling as an example).
Well, it was actually a bit worse than that, in that it wasn’t actually a cable, but one of those iFi spdif iPurifiers which actually wasn’t doing that much for the TV and I was planning on selling. I’m not too concerned - I don’t need that connection and no plan on selling the V1 anytime soon. But, yeah, easier to sheer off an RCA cable vs a locked preh ring.
I remember one afternoon in the mid 90s. I’d been asked to move an Arcam system from the dem room to be boxed for a customer. There was a particularly tight Audioquest Ruby connecting the CD player to the amp. I huffed and puffed. And all of the sudden the Ruby came free of the Alpha 5 amp. Yeay!
Oh hang on, what’s that stuck to the end of the cable? It had pulled outer RCA contact right out of the back of the amp! Leaving a vaguely RCA shaped plastic nub where one of the sockets had been.